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FIELDING 



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PREFATORY NOTE. 

From a critical point of view, the works of Fielding have 
received abundant examination at the hands of a long line 
of distinguished writers. Of these, the latest is by no means 
the least; and as Mr. Leslie Stephen's brilliant studies, in 
the recent edition de luxe and the Cornhill Magazine, are 
now in every one's hands, it is perhaps no more than a wise 
discretion which has prompted me to confine my attention 
more strictly to the purely biographical side of the subject. 
In the present memoir, therefore, I have made it my duty, 
primarily, to verify such scattered anecdotes respecting Field- 
ing as have come down to us ; to correct (I hope not obtru- 
sively) a few mis-statements which have crept into previous 
accounts; and to add such supplementary details as I have 
been able to discover for myself. 

In this task I have made use of the following authori- 
ties : 

I. Arthur Murphy's Essay on the Life and Genius of Henry 
Fielding, Esq. This was prefixed to the first collected edi- 
tion of Fielding's works published by Andrew Millar in 
June, 1762 ; and it continued for a long time to be the rec- 
ognised authority for Fielding's life. It is possible that it 
fairly reproduces his personality, as presented by contempo- 
rary tradition; but it is misleading in its facts, and needless- 
ly diffuse. Under pretence of respecting " the manes of the 
dead," the writer seems to have found it pleasanter to fill his 
space with vagrant discussions on the "Middle Comedy of 



vi PREFATORY NOTE. 

the Greeks " and the machinery of the Rape of the Lock, than 
to make the requisite biographical inquiries. This is the 
more to be deplored, because, in 1762, Fielding's widow, 
brother, and sister, as well as his friend Lyttelton, were 
still alive, and trustworthy information should have been 
procurable. 

IT. Watson's Life of Henry Fielding, Esq. This is usually 
to be found prefixed to a selection of Fielding's works issued 
at Edinburgh. It also appeared as a volume in 1807, al- 
though there is no copy of it in this form at the British Mu- 
seum. It carries Murphy a little farther, and corrects him 
in some instances. But its author had clearly never even 
seen the Miscellanies of 1743, with their valuable Preface, for 
he speaks of them as one volume, and in apparent ignorance 
of their contents. 

III. Sir Walter Scott's biographical sketch for Ballantyne's 
Novelist's Library. This was published in 1821; and is now 
included in the writer's Miscellaneous Prose Works. Sir Wal- 
ter made no pretence to original research, and even spoke 
slightingly of this particular work; but it has all the charm 
of his practised and genial pen. 

IV. Roscoe's Memoir, compiled for the one-volume edition 
of Fielding, published by Washbourne and others in 1840. 

V. Thackeray's well-known lecture, in the English Hu- 
mourists of the Eighteenth Century, 1853. 

VI. The Life of Henry Fielding; with Notices of his Writ- 
ings, his Times, and his Contemporaries. By Frederick Law- 
rence. 1855. This is an exceedingly painstaking book, and 
constitutes the first serious attempt at a biography. Its 
chief defect — as pointed out at the time of its appearance — 
is an ill-judged emulation of Forster's Goldsmith. The au- 
thor attempted to make Fielding a literary centre, which is 
impossible ; and the attempt has involved him in needless 
digressions. He is also not always careful to give chapter 
and verse for his statements. 

VII. Thomas Keightley's papers On the Life and Writings 
of Henry Fielding , in Fraser's Magazine for January and Feb- 



PREFATORY NOTE. vif 

ruary, 1858. These, prompted by Mr. Lawrence's book, are 
most valuable, if only for the author's frank distrust of his 
predecessors. They are the work of an enthusiast, and a 
very conscientious examiner. If, as reported, Mr. Keightley 
himself meditated a life of Fielding, it is much to be regret- 
ted that he never carried out his intention. 

Upon the two last-mentioned works I have chiefly relied 
in the preparation of this study. I have freely availed my- 
self of the material that both authors collected, verifying 
it always, and extending it wherever I could. Of my other 
sources of information — pamphlets, reviews, memoirs, and 
newspapers of the day — the list would be too long; and suf- 
ficient references to them are generally given in the body of 
the text. I will only add that I think there is scarcely a 
quotation in these pages, however ascertained, which has not 
been compared with the original ; and, except where other- 
wise stated, all extracts from Fielding himself are taken 
from the first editions. 

At this distance of time, new facts respecting a man of 
whom so little has been recorded require to be announced 
with considerable caution. Some definite additions to Field- 
ing lore I have, however, been enabled to make. Thanks to 
the late Colonel J. L. Chester, who was engaged, only a few 
weeks before his death, in friendly investigations on my be- 
half, I am able to give, for the first time, the date and place 
of Fielding's second marriage, and the baptismal dates of all 
the children by that marriage, except the eldest. I am also 
able to fix approximately the true period of his love-affair 
with Miss Sarah Andrew. From the original assignment at 
South Kensington I have ascertained the exact sum paid by 
Millar for Joseph Andrews ; and in Chapter V. will be found 
a series of extracts from a very interesting correspondence, 
which does not appear to have been hitherto published, be- 
tween Aaron Hill, his daughters, and Richardson, respecting 
Tom Jones. Although I cannot claim credit for the discov- 
ery, I believe the present is also the first biography of Field- 
ing which entirely discredits the unlikely story of his having 



viii PREFATORY NOTE. 

been a stroller at Bartholomew Fair ; and I may also, I think, 
claim to have thrown some additional light on Fielding's 
relations with the Cibbers, seeing that the last critical essay 
upon the author of the Apology, which I have met with, con- 
tains no reference to Fielding at all. For such minor novel- 
ties as the passage from the Universal Spectator at p. 25, and 
the account of the projected translation of Lucian at p. 154, 
etc., the reader is referred to the book itself, where these, 
and other waifs and strays, are duly indicated. If, in my 
endeavour to secure what is freshest, I have at the same time 
neglected a few stereotyped quotations, which have hitherto 
seemed indispensable in writing of Fielding, I trust I may be 
forgiven. 

Brief as it is, the book has not been without its obliga- 
tions. To Mr. R. F. Sketchley, Keeper of the Dyce and Fors- 
ter Collections at South Kensington, I am indebted for refer- 
ence to the Hill correspondence, and for other kindly offices; 
to Mr. Frederick Locker for permission to collate Fielding's 
last letter with the original in his possession. My thanks 
are also due to Mr. R. Arthur Kinglake, J.P., of Taunton ; to 
the Rev. Edward Hale, of Eton College ; the Rev. G. C. Green, 
of Modbury, Devon ; the Rev. W. S. Shaw, of Twerton-on- 
Avon; and Mr. Richard Garnett, of the British Museum. 
Without some expression of gratitude to the last mentioned, 
it would indeed be almost impossible to conclude any mod- 
ern preface of this kind. If I have omitted the names of 
others who have been good enough to assist me, I must ask 
them to accept my acknowledgments, although they are not 
specifically expressed. 

Ealing, March, 1883. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER I. 



PAGK 

Early Years — First Plays 1 



CHAPTER II. 
More Plays— Marriage— The Licensing Act .27 

CHAPTER III. 
The "Champion"— "Joseph Andrews" ..... 57 

CHAPTER IV. 
The "Miscellanies"— "Jonathan Wild" .... 84 

CHAPTER V. 
"Tom Jones" ^ 111 

CHAPTER VI. 
Justice Life — " Amelia" 137 

CHAPTER VII. 
"Journal op a Voyage to Lisbon" 158 

POSTSCRIPT ...,.., 180 



FIELDING. 

CHAPTER I. 

EARLY YEARS FIRST PLAYS. 

Like his contemporary Smollett, Henry Fielding came 
of an ancient family, and might, in his Horatian moods, 
have traced his origin to Inachus. The lineage of the 
house of Denbigh, as given in Burke, fully justifies the 
splendid but sufficiently quoted eulogy of Gibbon. From 
that first Jeffrey of Hapsburgh, who came to England, 
temp. Henry III., and assumed the name of Fieldeng, or 
Filding, " from his father's pretensions to the dominions 
of Lauffenbourg and Rinfilding," the future novelist could 
boast a long line of illustrious ancestors. There was a 
Sir William Feilding killed at Tewkesbury, and a Sir 
Everard who commanded at Stoke. Another Sir William, 
a staunch Royalist, was created Earl of Denbigh, and died 
in fighting King Charles's battles. Of his two sons, the 
elder, Basil, who succeeded to the title, was a Parliamen- 
tarian, and served at Edgehill under Essex. George, his 
second son, was raised to the peerage of Ireland as Vis- 
count Callan, with succession to the earldom of Desmond ; 
and from this, the younger branch of the Denbigh family, 
Henry Fielding directly descended. The Earl of Des- 
1 



2 FIELDING. [chap. 

mond's fifth son, John, entered the Church, becoming 
Canon of Salisbury and Chaplain to William III. By his 
wife Bridget, daughter of Scipio Cockain, Esq., of Somer- 
set, he had three sons and three daughters. Edmund, the 
third son, was a soldier, who fought with distinction un- 
der Marlborough. When about the age of thirty, he mar- 
ried Sarah, daughter of Sir Henry Gould, Knt., of Sharp- 
ham Park, near Glastonbury, in Somerset, and one of the 
Judges of the King's Bench. These last were the parents 
of the novelist, who was born at Sharpham Park on the 
22d of April, 17 07. One of Dr. John Fielding's nieces, 
it may here be added, married the first Duke of King- 
ston, becoming the mother of Lady Mary Pierrepont, 
afterwards Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who was thus 
Henry Fielding's second cousin. She had, however, been 
born in 1689, and was consequently some years his senior. 
According to a pedigree given in Nichols (History and 
Antiquities of the County of Leicester), Edmund Fielding 
was only a lieutenant when he married ; and it is even 
not improbable (as Mr. Keightley conjectures from the 
I nearly secret union of Lieutenant Booth and Amelia in 
the later novel) that the match may have been a stolen 
one. At all events, the bride continued to reside at her 
father's house ; and the fact that Sir Henry Gould, by 
his will made in March, 1706, left his daughter £3000, 
which was to be invested " in the purchase either of 
a Church or Colledge lease, or of lands of Inheritance," 
for her sole use, her husband " having nothing to doe 
with it," would seem (as Mr. Keightley suggests) to indi- 
cate a distrust of his military, and possibly impecunious, 
son-in-law. This money, it is also important to re- 
member, w r as to come to her children at her death. Sir 
Henry Gould did not long survive the making of his will, 



l] EARLY YEARS. 3 

and died in March, 1710. 1 The Fieldings must then have 
removed to a small house at East Stour (now Stovver), in 
Dorsetshire, where Sarah Fielding was born in the follow- 
ing November. It may be that this property was purchased 
with Mrs. Fielding's money ; but information is wanting 
upon the subject. At East Stour, according to the ex- 
tracts from the parish register given in Hutchins's His- 
tory of Dorset, four children were born — namely, Sarah, 
above mentioned, afterwards the authoress of David Sim- 
ple, Anne, Beatrice, and another son, Edmund. Edmund, 
says Arthur Murphy, " was an officer in the marine ser- 
vice," and (adds Mr. Lawrence) " died young." Anne died 
at East Stour in August, 1716. Of Beatrice nothing fur- 
ther is known. These would appear to have been all the 
children of Edmund Fielding by his first wife, although, 
as Sarah Fielding is styled on her monument at Bath the 
second daughter of General Fielding, it is not impossible 
that another daughter may have been bom at Sharpham 
Park. 

At East Stour the Fieldings certainly resided until 
April, 1718, when Mrs. Fielding died, leaving her elder 
son a boy of not quite eleven years of age. How much 
longer the family remained there is unrecorded; but it 
is clear that a great part of Henry Fielding's childhood 
must have been spent by the " pleasant Banks of sweetly- 
winding Stour 1 " which passes through it, and to which he 
subsequently refers in Tom Jones. His education dur- 
ing this time was confided to a certain Mr. Oliver, whom 

1 Mr. Keightley, who seems to have seen the will, dates it — 
doubtless by a slip of the pen — May, 1708. Reference to the orig- 
inal, however, now at Somerset House, shows the correct date to 
be March 8, 1706, before which time the marriage of Fielding's 
parents must therefore be placed. 



4 FIELDING. [chap, 

Lawrence designates the "family chaplain." Keightley 
supposes that he was the curate of East Stour; but 
Hutchins, a better authority than either, says that he 
was the clergyman of Motcombe, a neighbouring village. 
Of this gentleman, according to Murphy, Parson Trulliber 
in Joseph Andrews is a " very humorous and striking por- 
trait." It is certainly more humorous than complimentary. 
From Mr. Oliver's fostering care — and the result shows 
that, whatever may have been the pig -dealing propen- 
sities of Parson Trulliber, it was not entirely profitless — 
Fielding was transferred to Eton. When this took place 
is not known ; but at that time boys entered the school 
much earlier than they do now, and it was probably not 
long after his mother's death. The Eton boys were then, 
as at present, divided into collegers and oppidans. There 
are no registers of oppidans before the end of the last 
century ; but the Provost of Eton has been good enough 
to search the college lists from 1715 to 1735, and there 
is no record of any Henry Fielding, nor indeed of any 
Fielding at all. It may, therefore, be concluded that he 
was an oppidan. No particulars of his stay at Eton have 
come down to us; but it is to be presumed Murphy's 
statement that, " when he left the place, he was said to 
be uncommonly versed in the Greek authors, and an 
early master of the Latin classics," is not made without 
foundation. 1 We have also his own authority (in Tom 
Jones) for supposing that he occasionally, if not frequently, 
sacrificed " with true Spartan devotion " at the " birchen 
Altar," of which a representation is to be found in Mr. 

1 Fielding's own words in the verses to Walpole some years later 
scarcely go so far : 

" Tuscan and French are in my Head; 
Latin I write, and Greek I — read." 



i.] EARLY YEARS. 5 

Maxwell Lyte's history of the College. And it may fairly 
be inferred that he took part in the different sports and 
pastimes of the day, such as Conquering Lobs, Steal bag- 
gage, Chuck, Starecaps, and so forth. Nor does it need 
any strong effort of imagination to conclude that he 
bathed in " Sandy-hole " or " Cuckow ware," attended the 
cock-fights in Bedford's Yard and the bull-baiting in Bach- 
elor's Acre, drank mild punch at the " Christopher," and, 
no doubt, was occasionally brought back by Jack Cutler, 
" Pursuivant of Runaways," to make his explanations to 
Dr. Bland the Head-Master, or Francis Goode the Usher. 
Amongst his school-fellows were some who subsequently 
attained to high dignities in the State, and still remained 
his friends. Foremost of these was George Lyttelton, later 
the statesman and orator, who had already commenced 
poet as an Eton boy with his "Soliloquy of a Beauty in 
the Country." Another was the future Sir Charles Han- 
bury Williams, the wit and squib-writer, then known as 
Charles Hanbury only. A third was Thomas Winnington, 
for whom, in after years, Fielding fought hard with brain 
and pen when Tory scribblers assailed his memory. Of 
those who must be regarded as contemporaries merely, 
were William Pitt, the " Great Commoner," and yet great- 
er Earl of Chatham ; Henry Fox, Lord Holland ; and 
Charles Pratt, Earl Camden. Gilbert West, the translator 
of Pindar, may also have been at Eton in Fielding's time, 
as he was only a year older, and was intimate with Lyttel- 
ton. Thomas Augustine Arne, again, famous in days to 
come as Dr. Arne, was doubtless also at this date practis- 
ing sedulously upon that " miserable cracked common 
flute," with which tradition avers he was wont to torment 
his school-fellows. Gray and Horace Walpole belong to a 
later period. 



6 FIELDING. [chap. 

During his stay at Eton, Fielding bad been rapidly 
developing from a boy into a young man. When he left 
school it is impossible to say ; but he was probably seven- 
teen or eighteen years of age, and it is at this stage of his 
career that must be fixed an occurrence which some of his 
biographers place much farther on. This is his earliest 
recorded love-affair. At Lyme Regis there resided a 
young lady, who, in addition to great personal charms, had 
the advantage of being the only daughter and heiress of 
one Solomon Andrew, deceased, a merchant of considerable 
local reputation. Lawrence says that she was Fielding's 
cousin. This may be so ; but the statement is unsupport- 
ed by any authority. It is certain, however, that her fa- 
ther was dead, and that she was living " in maiden medi- 
tation " at Lyme with one of her guardians, Mr. Andrew 
Tucker. In his chance visits to that place, young Field- 
ing appears to have become desperately enamoured of her, 
and to have sadly fluttered the Dorset dovecotes by his 
pertinacious and undesirable attentions. At one time he 
seems to have actually meditated the abduction of his 
'"flame," for an entry in the town archives, discovered by 
Mr. George Roberts, sometime Mayor of Lyme, who tells 
the story, declares that Andrew Tucker, Esq., went in fear 
of his life "owing to the behaviour of Henry Fielding and 
his attendant, or man." Such a state of things (especially 
when guardians have sons of their own) is clearly not to 
be endured; and Miss Andrew was prudently transferred 
to the care of another guardian, Mr. Rhodes of Modbury, 
in South Devon, to whose son, a young gentleman of Ox- 
ford, she was promptly married. Burke {Landed Gentry, 
1858) dates the marriage in 1726, a date which is practi- 
cally confirmed by the baptism of a child at Modbury in 



i.] EARLY YEARS. 7 

April of the following year. 1 Burke further describes the 
husband as Mr. Ambrose Rhodes of Buckland House, 
Buckland-Tout-Saints. His son, Mr. Rhodes of Bellair, 
near Exeter, was gentleman of the Privy Chamber to 
George III. ; and one of his descendants possessed a pict- 
ure which passed for the portrait of Sophia Western. The 
tradition of the Tucker family pointed to Miss Andrew as 
the original of Fielding's heroine ; but though such a sup- 
position is intelligible, it is untenable, since he says dis- 
tinctly (Book XIII. chap. i. of Tom Jones) that his model 
was his first wife, whose likeness he moreover draws very 
specifically in another -place, by declaring that she resem- 
bled Margaret Cecil, Lady Ranelagh, and, more nearly, 
" the famous Dutchess of Mazarine.'''' 

With this early escapade is perhaps to be connected 
what seems to have been one of Fielding's earliest literary 
efforts. This is a modernisation in burlesque octosyllabic 
verse of part of Juvenal's sixth satire. In the " Preface " 
to the later published Miscellanies, it is said to have been 
" originally sketched out before he was Twenty," and to 
have constituted " all the Revenge taken by an injured 
Lover." But it must have been largely revised subsequent 
to that date, for it contains references to Mrs. Clive, Mrs. 
Woffington, Gibber the younger, and even to Richardson's 
Pamela. It has no special merit, although some of the 
couplets have the true Swiftian turn. If Murphy's state- 
ment be correct, that the author " went from Eton to 
Leydcn," it must have been planned at the latter place, 
where, he tells us in the preface to Don Quixote in Eng- 
land, he also began that comedy. Notwithstanding these 
literary distractions, he is nevertheless reported to have 



1 This has been ascertained from the Modbury parish registers. 
B 



8 HELDIXG. [chap. 

studied the civilians "with a remarkable application for 
about two years. 1 ' At the expiration of this time, remit- 
tances from home failing, he was obliged to forego the 
lectures of the " learned Vitriarius " (then Professor of 
Civil Law at Ley den University), and return to London, 
which he did at the beginning of 1728 or the end of 
1727. 

The fact was that his father, never a rich man, had mar- 
ried again. His second wife was a widow named Eleanor 
Rasa ; and by this time he was fast acquiring a second 
family. Under the pressure of his growing cares, he 
found himself, however willing, as Imable to maintain his 
eldest son in London as he had previously been to dis- 
charge his expenses at Lcyden. Nominally, he made him 
an allowance of two hundred a year; but this, as Fielding 
himself explained, " any body might pay that would." 
The consequence was, that not long after the arrival of 
the latter in the Metropolis he had given up all idea of 
pursuing the law, to which his mother's legal connections 
had perhaps first attracted him, and had determined to 
adopt the more seductive occupation of living by his wits. 
At this date he was in the prime of youth. From the 
portrait by Hogarth representing him at a time when he 
was broken in health and had lost his teeth, it is difficult 
to reconstruct his likeness at twenty. But we may fairly 
assume the "high-arched Roman nose" with which his 
enemies reproached him, the dark eyes, the prominent 
chin, and the humorous expression ; and it is clear that he 
must have been tall and vigorous, for he was over six feet 
when he died, and had been remarkably strong and active. 
Add to this that he inherited a splendid constitution, with 
an unlimited capacity for enjoyment, and we have a fair 
idea of Henry Fielding at that moment of his career, when 



i ] EARLY YEARS. 9 

with passions " tremblingly alive all o'er " — as Murphy 
says — he stood, 

" This way and that dividing the swift mind," 

between the professions of haekney-writer and hackney- 
coachman. His natural bias was towards literature, and 
his opportunities, if not his inclinations, directed him to 
dramatic writing. 

It is not necessary to attempt any detailed account of 
the state of the stage at this epoch. Nevertheless, if only 
to avoid confusion in the future, it will be well to enumer- 
ate the several London theatres in 1728, the more especial- 
ly as the list is by no means lengthy. First and foremost 
there was the old Opera House in the Hay market, built by 
Yanbrugh, as far back as 1705, upon the site now occupied 
by Her Majesty's Theatre. This was the home of that 
popular Italian song which so excited the anger of thor- 
ough-going Britons; and here, at the beginning of 1728, 
they were performing Handel's opera of Siroe, and de- 
lighting the cognoscenti by Dite die fa, the echo-air in the 
same composer's Tolomeo. Opposite the Opera House, 
and, in position, only " a few feet distant " from the exist- 
ing Hay market Theatre, was the New, or Little Theatre in 
the Hay market, which, from the fact that it had been 
opened eight years before by " the French Comedians," 
was also sometimes styled the French House. Next comes 
the no-longer-existent theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields, 
which Christopher Rich had rebuilt in 1714, and which 
his son John had made notorious for pantomimes. Here 
the Beggar's Opera, precursor of a long line of similar 
productions, had just been successfully produced. Finally, 
most ancient of them all, there was the Theatre-Royal in 
Drury Lane, otherwise the King's Play House, or Old 
1* 



}<) FIELDING. [chap. 

House, The virtual patentees at this time were the act- 
ors Colley Gibber, Robert Wilks, and Barton Booth. The 
two former were just playing the Provok'd Husband, in 
which the famous Mrs. Oldfield (Pope's "Narcissa") had 
created a furore by her assumption of Lady Townley. 
These, in February, 1728, were the four principal London 
theatres. Goodman's Fields, where Garrick made his 
debut, was not opened until the following year, and Cov- 
ent Garden belongs to a still later date. 

Fielding's first dramatic essay — or, to speak more pre- 
cisely, the first of his dramatic essays that was produced 
upon the stage — was a five-act comedy entitled Love in 
Several Masques. It was played at Drury Lane in Feb- 
ruary, 1728, succeeding the ProvoJcd Husband. In his 
"Preface" the young author refers to the disadvantage 
under which he laboured in following close upon that 
comedy, and also in being "cotemporary with an Enter- 
tainment which engrosses the whole Talk and Admiration 
of the Town," — i.e. the Beggar's Opera. He also ac- 
knowledges the kindness of Wilks and Cibbcr " previous 
to its Representation," and the fact that he had thus ac- 
quired their suffrages makes it doubtful whether his stay 
at Leyden was not really briefer than is generally sup- 
posed, or that he left Eton much earlier. In either case 
he must have been in London some months before Love 
in Several Masques appeared, for a first play by an untried 
youth of twenty, however promising, is not easily brought 
upon the boards in any era; and from his own utterances 
in Pasquhi, ten years later, it is clear that it was no easier 
then than now. The sentiments of the Fustian of that 
piece in the following protest probably give an accurate 
picture of the average dramatic experiences of Henry 
Fielding : 



•i.] FIRST PLAYS. 11 

" These little things, Mr. Sneerioell, will sometimes happen. In- 
deed a Poet undergoes a great deal before he comes to his Third 
Night ; first with the Muses, who are humorous Ladies, and must be 
attended ; for if they take it into their Head at any time to go abroad 
and leave you, you will pump your Brain in vain : Then. Sir, with the 
Master of a Playhouse to get it acted, whom you generally follow a 
guarter of a Year before you know whether he will receive it or no; 
and then perhaps he tells you it won't do, and returns it you again, 
reserving the Subject, and perhaps the Name, which he brings out in 
his next Pantomime ; but if he should receive the Play, then you 
must attend again to get it writ out into Parts, and Rehears'd. Well, 
Sir, at last the Rehearsals begin ; then, Sir, begins another Scene of 
Trouble with the Actors, some of whom dont like their Parts, and 
all are continually plaguing you with Alterations: At length, after 
having waded thro' all these Difficulties, his [the?] Play appears on 
the Stage, where one Man Hisses out of Resentment to the Author ; 
a Second out of Dislike to the House ; a Third out of Dislike to the 
Actor ; a Fourth out of Dislike to the Play ; a Fifth for the Joke 
sake ; a Sixth to keep all the rest in Company. Enemies abuse him, 
Friends give him up, the Play is damn'd, and the Author goes to the 
Devil, so ends the Farce." 



To which Sneerwell replies, with much promptitude : 
"The Tragedy rather, I think, Mr. Fustian" But what- 
ever may have been its preliminary difficulties, Fielding's 
first play was not exposed to so untoward a fate. It was 
well received. As might be expected in a beginner, and 
as indeed the references in the Preface to Wycherley and 
Congreve would lead us to expect, it Was an obvious at- 
tempt in the manner of those then all -popular writers. 
The dialogue is ready and witty. But the characters have 
that obvious defect which Lord Beaconsfield recognised 
when he spoke in later life of his own earliest efforts. 
"Books written by boys," he says, "which pretend to 
give a picture of manners and to deal in knowledge of 
human nature must necessarily be founded on affectation."' 



12 FIELDING. [citap. 

To this rule the personages of Love in Several Masques 
are no exception. They are drawn rather from the stage 
than from life, and there is little constructive skill in the 
plot. A certain booby squire, Sir Positive Trap, seems 
like a first indication of some of the later successes in the 
novels ; but the rest of the dramatis persona? are puppets. 
The success of the piece was probably owing to the acting 
of Mrs. Oldfield, who took the part of Lady Matchless, a 
character closely related to the Lady Townleys and Lady 
Betty Modishes, in w r hich she won her triumphs. She 
seems, indeed, to have been unusually interested in this 
comedy, for she consented to play in it notwithstanding a 
" slight Indisposition " contracted " by her violent Fatigue 
in the Part of Lady Townly," and she assisted the author 
with her corrections and advice — perhaps with her influ- 
ence as an actress. Fielding's distinguished kinswoman 
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu also read the MS. Looking 
to certain scenes in it, the protestation in the Prologue — 

"Nought shall offend the Fair Ones Ears to-day, 
Which they might blusli to hear, or blush to say " — 

Iips an air of insincerity, although, contrasted with some 
of the writer's later productions, Love in Several Masques 
is comparatively pure. But he might honestly think that 
the work which had received the imprimatur of a stage- 
queen and a lady of quality should fairly be regarded as 
morally blameless, and it is not necessary to bring any 
bulk of evidence to prove that the morality of 1728 dif- 
fered from the morality of to-day. 

To the last-mentioned year is ascribed a poem entitled 
the " Masquerade. Inscribed to C — t H — d — g — r. By 
Lemuel Gulliver, Poet Laureate to the King of Lilliput." 
In this Fielding made his satirical contribution to the at- 



i.] FIRST PLAYS. 13 

tacks on those impure gatherings organised by the notori- 
ous Heidegger, which Hogarth had not long before stig- 
matised pictorially in the plate known to collectors as the 
"large Masquerade Ticket." As verse this performance is 
worthless, and it is not very forcibly on the side of good 
manners ; but the ironic dedication has a certain touch of 
Fielding's later fashion. Two other poetical pieces, after- 
wards included in the Miscellanies of 1743, also bear the 
date of 1728. One is A Description of U — n G — (alias 
New Hog's Norton) in Com. Hants, which Mr. Keightley 
has identified with Upton Grey, near Odiham, in Hamp- 
shire. It is a burlesque description of a tumble -down 
country-house in which the writer was staying, and is ad- 
dressed to Rosalinda. The other is entitled To Euthalia, 
from which it must be concluded that, in 1728, Sarah An- 
drew had found more than one successor. But in spite 
of some biographers, and of the apparent encouragement 
given to his first comedy, Fielding does not seem to have 
followed up dramatic authorship with equal vigour, or at 
all events with equal success. His real connection with 
the stage does not begin until January, 1730, when the 
Temple Beau was produced by Giffard the actor at the the- 
atre in Goodman's Fields, which had then just been opened 
by Thomas Odell ; and it may be presumed that his in- 
centive was rather want of funds than desire of fame. 
The Temple Beau certainly shows an advance upon its 
predecessor; but it is an advance in the same direction, 
imitation of Congreve ; and although Geneste ranks 'it 
among the best of Fielding's plays, it is doubtful whether 
modern criticism would sustain his verdict. It ran for a 
short time, and was then withdrawn. The Prologue was 
the work of James Ralph, afterwards Fielding's colleague 
in the Champion, and it thus refers to the prevailing taste. 



14 FIELDING. [chap. 

The Beggar's Opera had killed Italian song, but now a 
new danger had arisen — 

' ' Humour and Wit, in each politer Age, 
Triumphant, reared the Trophies of the Stage : 
But only Farce, and Shew, will now go down, 
And Harlequin's the Darling of the Town." 

As if to confirm his friend's opinion, Fielding's next 
piece combined the popular ingredients above referred to. 
In March following he produced at the Hay market, under 
the pseudonym of Scriblerus Secnndus, The Author's Farce, 
with a " Puppet Show " called The Pleasures of the Town. 
In the Puppet Show, Henley, the Clare-Market Orator, and 
Samuel Johnson, the quack author of the popular Hurlo- 
thrumbo, were smartly satirised, as also was the fashiona- 
ble craze for Opera and Pantomime. But the most en- 
during part of this odd medley is the farce which occupies 
the two first acts, and under thin disguises no doubt de- 
picts much which was within the writer's experience. At 
all events, Luckless, the author in the play, has more than 
one of the characteristics which distinguish the traditional 
portrait of Fielding himself in his early years. He wears 
a laced coat, is in love, writes plays, and cannot pay his 
landlady, who declares, with some show of justice, that 
she " would no more depend on a Benefit-Night of an un- 
acted Play, than she wou'd on a Benefit-Ticket in an un- 
drawn Lottery." " Her Floor (she laments) is all spoil'd 
with Ink — her Windows with Verses, and her Door has 
been almost beat down with Duns." But the most hu- 
morous scenes in the play — scenes really admirable in their 
ironic delineation of the seamy side of authorship in 1730 
— are those in which Mr. Bookweight, the publisher — the 
Curll or Osborne of the period — is shown surrounded by 



I.] FIRST PLAYS. 15 

the obedient hacks, who feed at his table on " good Milk- 
porridge, very often twice a Day," and manufacture the 
murders, ghost-stories, political pamphlets, and translations 
from Virgil (out of Dry den) with which he supplies his 
customers. Here is one of them as good as any : 

u Boohw eight. So, Mr. Index, what News with you ? 

" Index. I have brought my Bill, Sir. 

" Book. What's here ? — for fitting the Motto of Risum teneatis 
Amid to a dozen Pamphlets at Sixpence per each, Six Shillings — 
For Omnia vincit Amor, & nos cedamus Arnori, Sixpence — For Diffi- 
cile est Satyram non scribere, Sixpence — Hum! hum! hum! Sum 
total, for Thirty-six Latin Motto's, Eighteen Shillings; ditto English, 
One Shilling and Ninepence ; ditto Greek, Four, Four Shillings. 
These Greek Motto's are excessively dear. 

" Ltd. If you have them cheaper at either of the Universities, I 
will give you mine for nothing. 

" Book. You shall have your Money immediately, and pray remem- 
ber that I must have two Latin Seditious Motto's and one Greek 
Moral Motto for Pamphlets by to-morrow Morning. . . . 

" Ind. Sir, I shall provide them. Be pleas'd to look on that, Sir, 
and print me Five hundred Proposals, and as many Receipts. 

" Book. Proposals for printing by Subscription a new Translation 
of Cicero, Of the Nature, of the Gods and his Tusculan Questions, by 
Jeremy Index, Esq. ; I am sorry you have undertaken this, for it pre- 
vents a Design of mine. 

" Ind. Indeed, Sir, it does not, for you see all of the Book that I 
ever intend to publish. It is only a handsome Way of asking one'? 
Friends for a Guinea. 

" Book. Then you have not translated a Word of it, perhaps. 

u Ind. Not a single Syllable. 

" Book. Well, you shall have your Proposals forthwith ; but I de- 
sire you wou'd be a little more reasonable in your Bills for the fut- 
ure, or I shall deal with you no longer ; for I have a certain Fellow 
of a College, who offers to furnish me with Second-hand Motto's out 
of the Spectator for Two-pence each. 

" Ind. Sir, I only desire to live by my Goods, and I hope you will 
be pleas'd to allow some difference between a neat fresh Piece, 



16 FIELDING. [chap. 

piping hot out of the Classicks, and old thread-bare worn-out Stuff 
that has past thro' ev'ry Pedant's Mouth. . . ." 

The latter part of this amusing dialogue, referring to 
Mr. Index's translation from Cicero, was added in an 
amended version of the Author's Farce, which appeared 
some years later, and in which Fielding depicts the por- 
trait of another all-powerful personage in the literary life — 
the actor-manager. This, however, will be more conven- 
iently treated under its proper date, and it is only neces- 
sary to say here that the slight sketches of Marplay and 
Sparkish given in the first edition, were presumably in- 
tended for Cibber and Wilks, with whom, notwithstand- 
ing the "civil and kind Behaviour" for which he had 
thanked them in the " Preface " to Love in Several Masques, 
the young dramatist was now, it seems, at war. In the 
introduction to the Miscellanies, he refers to "a slight 
Pique" with Wilks; and it is not impossible that the key 
to the difference may be found in the following passage : 

" Sparkish. What dost think of the Play ? 

" Marplay. It may be a very good one, for ought I know ; but I 
know the Author has no Interest. 

" Spark. Give me Interest, and rat the Play. 

" Mar. Rather rat the Play which has no Interest. Interest sways 
as much in the Theatre as at Court. — And you know it is not always 
the Companion of Merit in either." 

The handsome student from Leyden — the potential Con- 
greve who wrote Love in Several Masques, and had Lady 
Mary Wortley Montagu for patroness, might fairly be sup- 
posed to have expectations which warranted the civilities 
of Messrs. Wilks and Cibber; but the "Luckless" of two 
years later had probably convinced them that his dramatic 
performances did not involve their sine qua non of suc- 
cess. Under these circumstances nothing perhaps could 



i.] EARLY PLAYS. 17 

be more natural than that they should play their parts in 
his little satire. 

We have dwelt at some length upon the Author's Farce, 
because it is the first of Fielding's plays in which, leaving 
the " wit-traps " of Wycherley and Congreve, he deals with 
the direct censure of contemporary folly, and because, 
apart from translation and adaptation, it is in this field 
that his most brilliant theatrical successes were won. For 
the next few years he continued to produce comedies and 
farces with great rapidity, both under his own name, and 
under the pseudonym of Scriblerus Secundus. Most of 
these show manifest signs of haste, and some are reckless- 
ly immodest. We shall confine ourselves to one or two 
of the best, and do little more than enumerate the others. 
Of these latter, the Coffee-House Politician; or, The Jus- 
tice caught in his own Trap, 1730, succeeded the Author's 
Farce. The leading idea, that of a tradesman who neg-"^ 
lects his shop for "foreign affairs," appears to be derived 
from Addison's excellent character-sketch in the Tatler of 
the "Political Upholsterer." This is the more likely, in 
that Arne the musician, whose father is generally sup-, 
posed to have been Addison's original, was Fielding's con- 
temporary at Eton. Justice Squeezum, another character 
contained in this play, is a kind of first draft of the later 
Justice Thrasher in Amelia. The representation of the 
trading justice on the stage, however, was by no means 
new, since Justice Quorum in Coffey's Beggar s Wedding 
(with whom, as will appear presently, Fielding's name has 
been erroneously associated) exhibits similar characteris- 
tics. Omitting for the moment the burlesque of Tom 
Thumb, the Coffee-House Politician was followed by the 
Letter Writers ; or, A new Way to Keep a Wife at Home, 
1*731, a brisk little farce, with one vigorously drawn chap 



18 FIELDING. [chap. 

acter, that of Jack Commons, a young university rake ; 
the Grub- Street Opera, 1731 ; the farce of the Lottery, 
1731, in which the famous Mrs. Give, then Miss Raftor, 
appeared; the Modern Husband, 1732; the Covent Gar- 
den Tragedy, 1732, a broad and rather riotous burlesque 
of Ambrose Philips' Distrest Mother ; and the Debau- 
chees; or, The Jesuit Caught, 1732 — which was based 
upon the then debated story of Father Girard and Cathe- 
rine Cadiere. 

Neither of the two last-named pieces is worthy of the 
author, and their strongest condemnation in our day is 
that they were condemned in their own for their unbridled 
license, the Grub Street Journal going so far as to say 
that they had " met with the universal detestation of the 
Town." The Modern Husband^ which turns on that most 
loathsome of all commercial pursuits, the traffic of a hus- 
band in his wife's dishonour, appears, oddly enough, to 
have been regarded by its author with especial complacen- 
cy. Its prologue lays stress upon the moral purpose ; it 
was dedicated to Sir Robert Walpole ; and from a couple 
of letters printed in Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's Corre- 
spondence, it is clear that it had been submitted to her pc 
rusal. It had, however, no great success upon the stage 
and the chief thing worth remembering about it is that ii 
afforded his last character to Wilks, who played the part 
of Bellamant. That "slight Pique," of which mention has 
been made, was no doubt by this time a thing of the past. 

But if most of the works in the foregoing list can hard- 
ly be regarded as creditable to Fielding's artistic or moral 
sense, one of them at least deserves to be excepted, and 
that is the burlesque of Tom Thumb. This was first 
brought out in 1730 at the little theatre in the Hay market, 
where it met with a favourable reception. In the follow- 



I.] EARLY PLAYS. 19 

ing year it was enlarged to three acts (in the first version 
there had been but two), and reproduced at the same the- 
atre as the Tragedy of Tragedies ; or, The Life and Death 
of Tom Thumb the Great, " with the Annotations of H. 
Scriblerus Secundus." It is certainly one of the best bur- 
lesques ever written. As Baker observes in his Biographia 
Dramatica, it may fairly be ranked as a sequel to Buck- 
ingham's Rehearsal, since it includes the absurdities of 
nearly all the writers of tragedies from the period when 
that piece stops to 1730. Among the authors satirised 
are Nat. Lee, Thomson (whose famous 

" Sophonisba, Sophonisba, !" 
is parodied by 

' " Huncamunca, Huncamunca, !"), 

Banks's Earl of Essex, a favourite play at Bartholomew 
Fair, the Busiris of Young, and the Aurengzebe of Dry den, 
etc. The annotations, which abound in transparent refer- 
ences to Dr. B[ew£/e]y, Mr. T[heobal]d, Mr. D[emM*]s, are 
excellent imitations of contemporary pedantry. One ex- 
ample, elicited in Act 1 by a reference to "giants," must 
stand for many : 

" That learned Historian Mr. S n in the third Number of his 

Criticism on our Author, takes great Pains to explode this Passage. 
It is, says he, difficult to guess what Giants are here meant, unlesi- 
the Giant Despair in the Pilgrini's Progress, or the giant Greatness 
in the Royal Villain; for I have heard of no other sort of Giants in 
the Reign of King Arthur. Petrus Burmanus makes three Tom, 
Thumbs-, one whereof he supposes to have been the same Person 
whom the Greeks called Hercules, and that by these Giants are to be 
understood the Centaurs slain by that Heroe. Another Tom Thumb 
he contends to have been no other than the Hermes Trismegistus of 
the Antients. The third Tom Thumb he places under the Reign of 
King Arthur; to which third Tom Thumb, says he, the Actions of 



20 FIELDING. [chap. 

the other two were attributed. Now, tho' I know that this Opinion 
is supported by an Assertion of Justus Lipsius, Thomam ilium Thum- 
bum non alium quam Hercidem fuisse satis constat; yet shall I vent- 
ure to oppose one Line of Mr. Midwinter, against them all, 

1 In Arthurs' Court Torn Thumb did live.'' 

"But then, says Dr. B y, if we place Tom Thumb in the Court 

of King Arthur, it will be proper to place that Court out of Britain, 
where no Giants were ever heard of. Spencer, in his Fairy Queen, is 
of another Opinion, where describing Albion, he says, 

' Far within, a salvage Nation dwelt 
Of hideous Giants.' " 

And in the same canto : 

" ' Then Elfar, vnth tvjo Brethren Giants had 
The one of which had two Heads, — 
T7ie other three.' 
Risum teneatis, Amici." 

Of the play itself it is difficult to give an idea by ex- 
tract, as nearly every line travesties some tragic passage 
once familiar to play-goers, and now utterly forgotten. 
But the following lines from one of the speeches of Lord 
Grizzle — a part admirably acted by Liston in later years 1 
— are a fair specimen of its ludicrous use (or rather abuse) 
of simile : 

" Yet think not long, I will my Rival bear, 
Or unreveng'd the slighted Willow wear; 
The gloomy, brooding Tempest now confin'd, 
Within the hollow Caverns of my Mind, 
In dreadful Whirl, shall rowl along the Coasts, 
Shall thin the Land of all the Men it boasts, 
And cram up ev'ry Chink of Hell with Ghosts. 
So have I seen, in some dark Winter's Day, 
A sudden Storm rush down the Sky's High-Way, 

1 Compare Hazlitt On the Comic Writers of the Last Century. 



i.] EARLY PLAYS. 21 

Sweep thro' the Streets with terrible ding-dong, 
Gush thro' the Spouts, and wash whole Crowds along. 
The crowded Shops, the thronging Vermin skreen, 
Together cram the Dirty and the Clean, 
And not one Shoe-Boy in the Street is seen." 

In the modern version of Kane O'Hara, to which songs 
were added, the Tragedy of Tragedies still keeps, or kept 
the stage. But its crowning glory is its traditional con- 
nection with Swift, who told Mrs. Pilkington that he " had 
not laugh'd above twice " in his life, once at the tricks of 
a merry-andrew, and again when (in Fielding's burlesque) 
Tom Thumb killed the ghost. This is an incident of the 
earlier versions, omitted in deference to the critics, for 
which the reader will seek vainly in the play as now print- 
ed ; and even then he will discover that Mrs. Pilkington's 
memory served her imperfectly, since it is not Tom Thumb 
who kills the o;host, but the o-host of Tom Thumb which 
is killed by his jealous rival, Lord Grizzle. A trifling in- 
accuracy of this sort, however, is rather in favor of the 
truth of the story than against it, for a pure fiction would 
in all probability have been more precise. Another point 
of interest in connection with this burlesque is the frontia* 
piece which Hogarth supplied to the edition in 1731. It 
has no special value as a design, but it constitutes the ear- 
liest reference to that friendship with the painter, of whick 
so many traces are to be found in Fielding's works. 

Hitherto, Fielding had succeeded best in burlesque. 
But, in 1732, the same year in which he produced the 
Modern Husband, the Debauchees, and the Covent Garden 
Tragedy, he made an adaptation of Moliere's Medecin 
malgre lui, which had already been imitated in English 
by Mrs. Centlivre and others. This little piece, to which 
he gave the title of the Mock-Doctor ; or, The Dumb Lady 



22 FIELDING. [ch*p. 

cur'd, was well received. The French original was ren- 
dered with tolerable closeness ; but here and there Field- 
ing has introduced little touches of his own, as, for in- 
stance, where Gregory (Sganarelle) tells his wife Dorcas 
(Martine), whom he has just been beating, that as they are 
but one, whenever he beats her he beats half of himself. 
To this she replies by requesting that for the future he 
will beat the other half. An entire scene (the thirteenth) 
was also added at the desire of Miss Raftor, who played 
Dorcas, and thought her part too short. This is apparent- 
ly intended as a burlesque of the notorious quack Misau- 
bin, to whom the Mock-Doctor was ironically dedicated. 
He was the proprietor of a famous pill, and was introduced 
by Hogarth into the Harlot's Progress. Gregory was 
played by Theophilus Cibber, and the preface contains a 
complimentary reference to his acting, and the expected 
retirement of his father from the stage. Neither Geneste 
nor Lawrence gives the date when the piece was first pro- 
duced, but if the " April " on the dubious author's benefit 
ticket attributed to Hogarth be correct, it must have been 
in the first months of 1732. 

• The cordial reception of the Mock-Doctor seems to have 
encouraged Fielding to make further levies upon Moliere, 
and he speaks of his hope to do so in the " Preface." As 
a matter of fact, he produced a version of L' 'Avare at 
Drury Lane in the following year, which entirely out- 
shone the older versions of Shad well and Ozell, and gained 
from Voltaire the praise of having added to the original 
" quelques beautes de dialogue particulieres a sd (Field- 
ing's) nation." Lovegold, its leading role, became a stock 
part. It was well played by its first actor Griffin, and was 
a favorite exercise with Macklin, Shuter, and (in our own 
days) Phelps. 



i.] EARLY PLAYS. 23 

In February, 1733, when the Miser was first acted, 
Fielding was five and twenty. His means at this time 
were, in all probability, exceedingly uncertain. The small 
proportion of money due to him at his mother's death 
had doubtless been long since exhausted, and he must 
have been almost wholly dependent upon the precarious 
profits of his pen. That he was assisted by rich and 
noble friends to any material extent appears, in spite of 
Murphy, to be unlikely. At all events, an occasional dedi- 
cation to the Duke of Richmond or the Earl of Chester- 
field cannot be regarded as proof positive. Lyttelton, who 
certainly befriended him in later life, was for a great part 
of this period absent on the Grand Tour, and Ralph Allen 
had not yet come forward. In default of the always de- 
ferred allowance, his father's house at Salisbury (?) was no 
doubt open to him ; and it is plain, from indications in 
his minor poems, that he occasionally escaped into the 
country. But in London he lived for the most part, and 
probably not very worshipfully. What, even now, would 
be the life of a young man of Fielding's age, fond of pleas- 
ure, careless of the future, very liberally equipped with 
high spirits, and straightway exposed to the perilous se- 
ductions of the stage? Fielding had the defects of his 
qualities, and was no better than the rest of those about 
him. He was manly, and frank, and generous ; but these 
characteristics could scarcely protect him from the terrors 
of the tip-staff,, and the sequels of " t'other bottle." In- 
deed, he very honestly and unfeignedly confesses to the 
lapses of his youth in the Journey from this World to the 
Next, adding that he pretended " to very little Virtue 
more than general Philanthropy and private Friendship." 
It is therefore but reasonable to infer that his daily life 

must have been more than usuallv characterised bv the vi- 
C 



24 FIELDING. [chap. 

cissitudes of the eighteenth-century prodigal, — alternations 
from the " Rose " to a Clare-Market ordinary, from gold-lace 
to fustian, from champagne to " British Burgundy." In 
a rhymed petition to Walpole, dated 1730, he makes pleas- 
ant mirth of what no doubt was sometimes sober truth — 
his debts, his duns, and his dinnerless condition. He (t!v 
verses tells us) 



Again- 



and 



" from his Garret can look down 

On the whole Street of Arlington.'''' x 

" The Family that dines the latest 
Is in our Street esteem'd the greatest ; 
But latest Hours must surely fall 
Before him who ne'er dines at all ;" 

" This too doth in my Favour speak, 
Your Levee is but twice a Week ; 
From mine I can exclude but one Day, 
My Door is quiet on a Sunday." 

When he can admit so much even jestingly of himself, it 
is but legitimate to presume that there is no great exag- 
geration in the portrait of him in 1735, by the anonymous 
satirist of Seasonable Reproof : 

" F g, who yesterday appear' d so rough, 

Clad in coarse Frize, and plaister'd down with Snuff, 
See how his Instant gaudy Trappings shine ; 
What Play-house Bard was ever seen so fine ! 
But this, not from his Humour flows, you'll say, 
But mere Necessity ; — for last Night lay 
In Pawn, the Velvet which he wears to-Day." 

His work bears traces of the inequalities and irregu- 
1 Where Sir Robert lived. 



i.] EARLY PLAYS. 25 

larities of his mode of living. Although in certain cases 
(e. g. the revised edition of Tom Thumb) the artist and 
scholar seems to have spasmodically asserted himself, the 
majority of his plays were hasty and ill-considered per- 
formances, most of which (as Lady Mary said) he would 
have thrown into the fire " if meat could have been got 
without money, and money without scribbling." " When 
he had contracted to bring on a play, or a farce," says 
Murphy, " it is well known, by many of his friends now 
living, that he would go home rather late from a tavern, 
and would, the next morning, deliver a scene to the play- 
ers, written upon the papers which had wrapped the to- 
bacco, in which he so much delighted." It is not easy 
to conceive, unless Fielding's capacities as a smoker were 
phenomenal, that any large contribution to dramatic liter- 
ature could have been made upon the wrappings of Vir- 
ginia or Freeman's Best; but that his reputation for care- 
less production was established amongst his contempora- 
ries is manifest from the following passage in a burlesque 
Author s Will, published in the Universal Spectator of 
Oldys: 

"Item, I give and bequeath to my very negligent Friend Henry 
Drama, Esq., all my Industry. And whereas the World may think 
this an unnecessary Legacy, forasmuch as the said Henry Drama, 
Esq., brings on the Stage four Pieces every Season ; yet as such 
Pieces are always wrote with uncommon Rapidity, and during such 
fatal Intervals only as the Stocks have been on the Fall, this Legacy 
will be of use to him to revise and correct his Works. Further- 
more, for fear the said Henry Drama should make an ill Use of 
the said Industry, and expend it all on a Ballad Farce, it's my Will 
the said Legacy should be paid him by equal Portions, and as his 
Necessities may require." 

There can be little doubt that the above quotation, 
2 



26 



FIELDING. [chap. i. 



which is reprinted in the Gentleman's for July, 1734, and 
seems to have hitherto escaped inquiry, refers to none 
other than the "very negligent" Author of the Modern 
Husband and the Old Debauchees — in other words, to 
Henry Fielding. 



CHAPTER II. 

MORE PLAYS MARRIAGE THE LICENSING ACT. 

The very subordinate part in the Miser of " Furnish, an 
Upholsterer," was taken by a third-rate actor, whose 
surname has been productive of no little misconception 
amongst Henry Fielding's biographers. This was Timo- 
thy Fielding, sometime member of the Haymarket and 
Drury Lane companies, and proprietor, for several succes- 
sive years, of a booth at Bartholomew, Southwark, and 
other fairs. In the absence of any Christian name, Mr. 
Lawrence seems to have rather rashly concluded that the 
Fielding mentioned by Geneste as having a booth at 
Bartholomew Fair in 1773 with Hippisley (the original 
Peachum of the Beggar's Opera), was Fielding the drama- 
tist; and the mistake thus originated at once began that 
prosperous course which usually awaits any slip of the 
kind. It misled one notoriously careful inquirer, who, in 
his interesting chronicles of Bartholomew Fair, minutely 
investigated the actor's history, giving precise details of 
his doings at " Bartlemy " from 1728 to 1736; but, al- 
though the theory involved obvious inconsistencies, ap- 
parently without any suspicion that the proprietor of the 
booth which stood, season after season, in the yard of the 
George Inn at Smithfield, was an entirely different person 
from his greater namesake. The late Dr. Rimbault car- 



28 FIELDING. [chap. 

ried the story farther still, and attempted to show, in Notes 
and Queries for May, 1859, that Henry Fielding had a 
booth at Tottenham Court in 1738, "subsequent to his 
admission into the Middle Temple;" and he also promised 
to supply additional particulars to the effect that even 
1738 was not the " last year of Fielding's career as a 
booth-proprietor." At this stage (probably for good rea- 
sons) inquiry seems to have slumbered, although, with the 
fatal vitality of error, the statement continued (and still 
continues) to be repeated in various quarters. In 1875, 
however, Mr. Frederick Latreille published a short article 
in Notes and Queries, proving conclusively, by extracts 
from contemporary newspapers and other sources, that 
the Timothy Fielding above referred to was the real Field- 
ing of the fairs ; that he became landlord of the Buffalo 
Tavern "at the corner of Bloomsbury Square" in 1733; 
and that he died in August, 1738, his Christian name, so 
often suppressed, being duly recorded in the register of 
the neighbouring church of St. George's, where he was 
buried. The admirers of our great novelist owe Mr. La- 
treille a debt of gratitude for this opportune discovery. 
It is true that a certain element of Bohemian picturesque- 
ness is lost to Henry Fielding's life, already not very rich 
in recorded incident ; and it would certainly have been 
curious if he, who ended his days in trying to dignify the 
judicial office, should have begun life by acting the part 
of a " trading justice," namely, that of Quorum in Coffey's 
Beggar's Wedding, which Timothy Fielding had played at 
Drury Lane. But, on the whole, it is satisfactory to know 
that his early experiences did not, of necessity, include 
those of a strolling player. Some obscure and temporary 
connection with Bartholomew Fair be may have had, as 
Smollett, in the scurrilous pamphlet issued in 1742, makes 



il] MORE PLAYS. 29 

him say that he blew a trumpet there in quality of herald 
to a collection of wild beasts ; but this is probably no 
more than an earlier and uglier form of the apparition 
laid by Mr. Latreille. The only positive evidence of any 
connection between Henry Fielding and the Smithfield 
carnival is, that Theophilus Cibber's company played the 
Miser at their booth in August, 1733. 

With the exception of the Miser and an afterpiece, 
never printed, entitled Deborah ; or, A Wife for You All, 
which was acted for Miss Raftor's benefit in April, 1733, 
nothing important was brought upon the stage by Field- 
ing until January of the following year, when he produced 
the Intriguing Chambermaid, and a revised version of the 
Author's Farce. By a succession of changes, which it is 
impossible here to describe in detail,, considerable altera- 
tions had taken place in the management of Drury Lane. 
In the first place, Wilks was dead, and his share in the 
Patent was represented by his widow. Booth also was 
dead, and Mrs. Booth had sold her share to Giffard of 
Goodman's Fields, while the elder Gibber had retired. At 
the beginning of the season of 1733-34 the leading paten- 
tee was an amateur called Highmore, who had purchased 
Cibber's share. He had also purchased part of Booth's 
share before his death in May, 1733. The only other share- 
holder of importance was Mrs. Wilks. Shortly after the 
opening of the theatre in September, the greater part of 
the Drury Lane Company, led by the younger Cibber, re- 
volted from Highmore and Mrs. Wilks, and set up for 
themselves. Matters w 7 ere farther complicated by the fact 
that John Rich had not long opened a new theatre in Cov- 
ent Garden, which constituted a fresh attraction ; and that 
what Fielding called the " wanton affected Fondness for 
foreign Musick," was making the Italian opera a dangerous 



SO FIELDING. [chap. 

rival — the more so as it -was patronised by the nobility. 
Without actors, the patentees were in serious case. Miss 
Raftor, who about this time became Mrs. Clive, appears, 
however, to have remained faithful to them, as also did 
Henry Fielding. The lively little comedy of the Intrigu- 
ing Chambermaid was adapted from Regnard especially for 
her ; and in its published form was preceded by an epistle 
in which the dramatist dwells upon the " Factions and Di- 
visions among the Players," and compliments her upon her 
compassionate adherence to Mr. Highmore and Mrs. Wilks 
in their time of need. The epistle is also valuable for its 
warm and generous testimony to the private character of 
this accomplished actress, whose part in real life, says 
Fielding, was that of " the best Wife, the best Daughter, 
the best Sister, and the best Friend." The words are more 
than mere compliment; they appear to have been true. 
Madcap and humourist as she was, no breath of slander 
seems ever to have tarnished the reputation of Kitty 
Clive, whom Johnson — a fine judge, when his prejudices 
were not actively aroused — called in addition " the best 
player that he ever saw." 

The Intriguing Chambermaid was produced on the 15th 
of January, 1734. Lettice, from whom the piece was 
named, was well personated by Mrs. Clive, and Colonel 
Bluff by Macklin, the only actor of any promise that 
Highmore had been able to secure. With the new com- 
edy the Author's Farce was revived. It would be unnec- 
essary to refer to this again, but for the additions that 
were made to it. These consisted chiefly in the substitu- 
tion of Marplay Junior for Sparkish, the actor-manager of 
the first version. The death of Wilks may have been a 
reason for this alteration ; but a stronger was no doubt 
the desire to throw ridicule upon Theophilus Cibber, whose 



ti.] MORE PLAYS. 31 

behaviour in deserting Drury Lane immediately after his 
father had sold his share to Highmore had not passed 
without censure, nor had his father's action escaped sar- 
castic comment. Theophilus Gibber — whose best part was 
Beaumont and Fletcher's Copper Captain, and who carried 
the impersonation into private life — had played in several 
of Fielding's pieces ; but Fielding had linked his fortunes 
to those of the patentees, and was consequently against 
the players in this quarrel. The following scene was ac- 
cordingly added to the farce for the exclusive benefit of 
" Young Marplay :" 

" Marplay junior. Mr. Luckless, I kiss your Hands — Sir, I am your 
most obedient humble Servant ; you see, Mr. Luckless, what Power 
you have over me. I attend your Commands, tho' several Persons 
of Quality have staid at Court for me above this Hour. 

" Luckless. I am obliged to you — I have a Tragedy for your House, 
Mr. Marplay. 

" Mar.jun. Ha ! if you will send it me, I will give you my Opinion 
of it; and if I can make any Alterations in it that will be for its 
Advantage, I will do it freely. 

" Witmore. Alterations, Sir ? 

"Mar.jun. Yes, Sir, Alterations — I will maintain it, let a Play be 
never so good, without Alteration it will do nothing. 

" Wit. Very odd indeed. 

"Mar.jun. Did you ever write, Sir? 

"Wit. No, Sir, I thank Heav'n. 

"Mar.jun. Oh ! your humble Servant — your very humble Servant, 
Sir. When you write yourself you will find the Necessity of Altera- 
tions. Why, Sir, wou'd you guess that I had alter'd Shakespear ? 

"Wit. Yes, faith, Sir, no one sooner. 

"Mar.jun. Alack-a-day ! Was you to see the Plays when they 
are brought to us — a Parcel of crude, undigested Stuff. We are the 
Persons, Sir, who lick them into Form, that mould them into Shape 
— The Poet make the Play indeed ! The Colour-man might be as 
well said to make the Picture, or the Weaver the Coat: My Father 
and I, Sir, are 2 r ouple of poetical Tailors ; when a Play is brought 



32 FIELDING. [chap. 

us, we consider it as a Tailor does his Coat, we cut it, Sir, we cut it: 
And let me tell you, we have the exact Measure of the Town, we 
know how to fit their Taste. The Poets, between you and me, are a 
Pack of ignorant — 

U WU. Hold, hold, Sir. This is not quite so civil to Mr. Luckless: 
Besides, as I take it, you have done the Town the Honour of writing 
yourself. 

"Mar. jun. Sir, you are a Man of Sense; and express yourself 
well. I did, as you say, once make a small Sally into Parnassus, 
took a sort of flying Leap over Helicon : But if ever they catch me 
there again — Sir, the Town have a Prejudice to my Family; for if 
any Play cou'd have made them ashamed to damn it, mine must. It 
was all over Plot. It wou'd have made half a dozen Novels : Nor 
was it cram'd with a pack of Wit-traps, like Congreve and Wycherly, 
where every one knows when the Joke was coming. I defy the sharp- 
est Critick of 'em all to know when any Jokes of mine were coming. 
The Dialogue was plain, easy, and natural, and not one single Joke 
in it from the Beginning to the End : Besides, Sir, there was one 
Scene of tender melancholy Conversation, enough to have melted a 
Heart of Stone; and yet they damn'd it: And they damn'd them- 
selves ; for they shall have no more of mine. 

" Wit. Take pity on the Town, Sir. 

" Mar. jun. I ! No, Sir, no. I'll write no more. No more ; un- 
less I am fore'd to it. 

" Luckless. That's no easy thing, Marplay. 

" Mar. jun. Yes, Sir. Odes, Odes, a Man may be oblig'd to write 
those you know." 

These concluding lines plainly refer to the elder Cibber's 
appointment as Laureate in 1730, and to those "annual 
Birth-day Strains," with which he so long delighted the 
irreverent; while the alteration of Shakspeare and the 
cobbling of plays generally, satirised again in a later 
scene, are strictly in accordance with contemporary ac- 
counts of the manners and customs of the two dictators 
of Drury Lane. The piece indicated by Marplay Junior 
was, probably, Theophilus Cibber's Lover, which had 



ii.] MORE PLAYS. 33 

been produced in January, 1*731, with very moderate suc- 
cess. 

After the Intriguing Chambermaid and the revived 
Author's Farce, Fielding seems to have made farther 
exertions for " the distressed Actors in Drury Lane." 
He had always been an admirer of Cervantes, frequent 
references to whose master-work are to be found scattered 
through his plays; and he now busied himself with com- 
pleting and expanding the loose scenes of the comedy of 
Don Quixote in England, which (as before stated) he 
had sketched at Leyden for his own diversion. He 
had already thought of bringing it upon the stage, 
but had been dissuaded from doing so by Cibber and 
Booth, who regarded it as wanting in novelty. Now, 
however, he strengthened it by the addition of some 
election scenes, in which — he tells Lord Chesterfield 
in the dedication — he designed to give a lively repre- 
sentation of "the Calamities brought on a Country 
by general Corruption ;" and it was duly rehearsed. 
But unexpected delays took place in its production ; 
the revolted players returned to Drury Lane ; and, 
lest the actors' benefits should further retard its ap- 
pearance by postponing it until the winter season, 
Fielding transferred it to the Haymarket, where, accord- 
ing to Geneste, it was acted in April, 1734. As a play, 
Don Quixote in England has few stage qualities and no 
plot to speak of. But the Don with his whimsies, and 
Sancho with his appetite and string of proverbs, are con- 
ceived in something of the spirit of Cervantes. Squire 
Badger, too, a rudimentary Squire Western, well repre- 
sented by Macklin, is vigorously drawn ; and the song 
of his huntsman Scut, beginning with the fine line " The 
dusky Night rides down the Sky," has a verse that re- 
2* 



34 FIELDING. [chap. 

calls a practice of which Addison accuses Sir Roger de 

Coverley : 

" A brushing Fox in yonder Wood, 
Secure to find xne seek ; 
For why, I carry 'd sound and good, 
A Cartload there last Week. 

And a Hunting we will go." 

The election scenes, though but slightly attached to 
the main story, are keenly satirical, and considering that 
Hogarth's famous series of kindred prints belongs to a 
much later date, must certainly have been novel, as may 
be gathered from the following little colloquy between 
Mr. Mayor and Messrs. Guzzle and Retail : 

"Mayor (to Retail). ... I like an Opposition, because other- 
wise a Man may be oblig'd to vote against his Party ; therefore 
when we invite a Gentleman to stand, we invite him to spend his 
Money for the Honour of his Party; and when both Parties have 
spent as much as they are able, every honest Man will vote 
according to his Conscience. 

u Guz. Mr. Mayor talks like a Man of Sense and Honour, and it 
does me good to hear him. 

"May. Ay, ay, Mr. Guzzle, I never gave a vote contrary to my 
Conscience. I have very earnestly recommended the Country- 
Interest to all my Brethren : But before that, I recommended the 
Town-Interest, that is, the interest of this Corporation ; and first 
of all I recommended to every particular Man to take a partic- 
ular Care of himself. And it is with a certain way of Reasoning, 
That he who serves me best, will serve the Town best ; and he that 
serves the Town best, will serve the Country best." 

In the January and February of 1735 Fielding pro- 
duced two more pieces at Drury Laue, a farce and a five- 
act comedy. The farce — a lively trifle enough — was An 
Old Man taught Wisdom, a title subsequently changed 
to the Virgin Unmasked. It was obviously written to 



ii.] MORE PLAYS. 35 

display the talents of Mrs. Clive, who played in it her 
favourite character of a hoyden, and, after " interview- 
ing" a number of suitors chosen by her father, finally 
ran away with Thomas the footman — a course in those 
days not without its parallel in high life, above stairs as 
well as below. It appears to have succeeded, though 
Bookish, one of the characters, was entirely withdrawn 
in deference to some disapprobation on the part of 
the audience; while the part of Wormwood, a lawyer, 
which is found in the latest editions, is said to have been 
" omitted in representation." The comedy, entitled The 
Universal Gallant ; or, The different Husbands, was scarce- 
ly so fortunate. Notwithstanding that Quin, who, after 
an absence of many years, had returned to Drury Lane, 
played a leading part, and that Theophilus Cibber in the 
hero, Captain Smart, seems to have been fitted with a 
character exactly suited to his talents and idiosyncrasy, 
the play ran no more than three nights. Till the third act 
was almost over, " the Audience" says the Prompter (as 
quoted by " Sylvanus Urban "), " sat quiet, in hopes it 
would mend, till finding it grew worse and worse, they lost 
all Patience, and not an Expression or Sentiment after- 
wards pass'd without its deserved Censure." Perhaps it is 
not to be wondered at that the author — " the prolifick Mr. 
Fielding" as the Prompter calls him, attributed its con- 
demnation to causes other than its lack of interest. In his 
Advertisement he openly complains of the "cruel Usage" 
his " poor Play " had met with, and of the barbarity of 
the young men about town who made " a Jest of damning 
Plays " — a pastime which, whether it prevailed in this case 
or not, no doubt existed, as Sarah Fielding afterwards re- 
fers to it in David Simple. If an author — he goes on to 
say — "be so unfortunate [as] to depend on the success of 



36 FIELDING. [chap. 

his Labours for his Bread, he must be an inhuman Creat- 
ure indeed, who would out of sport and wantonness pre- 
vent a Man from getting a Livelihood in an honest and in- 
offensive Way, and make a jest of starving him and his 
Family." The plea is a good one if the play is good ; but 
if not, it is worthless. In this respect the public are like 
the French Cardinal in the story ; and when the famished 
writer's work fails to entertain them, they are fully justi- 
fied in doubting his raison d'etre. There is no reason for 
supposing that the Universal Gallant deserved a better 
fate than it met with. 

Judging from the time which elapsed between the pro- 
duction of this play and that of Pasquin (Fielding's next 
theatrical venture), it has been conjectured that the interval 
was occupied by his marriage, and brief experience as a 
Dorsetshire country gentleman. The exact date of his mar- 
riage is not known, though it is generally assumed to have 
taken place in the beginning of 1735. But it may well 
have been earlier, for it will be observed that in the above 
quotation from the Preface to the Universal Gallant, 
which is dated from "Buckingham Street, Feb. 12," he 
indirectly speaks of " his family." This, it is true, may be 
no more than the pious fraud of a bachelor ; but if it be 
taken literally, we must conclude that his marriage was 
already so far a thing of the past that he was already a 
father. This supposition would account for the absence 
of any record of the birth of a child during his forthcom- 
ing residence at East Stour, by the explanation that it had 
already happened in London ; and it is not impossible that 
the entry of the marriage, too, may be hidden away in 
some obscure Metropolitan parish register, since those of 
Salisbury have been fruitlessly searched. At this distance 
of time, however, speculation is fruitless ; and, in default 



ii.] MARRIAGE. 37 

of more definite information, the "spring of 1735," which 
Keightley gives, must be accepted as the probable date of 
the marriage. 

Concerning the lady, the particulars are more precise. 
She was a Miss Charlotte Cradock, one of three sisters liv- 
ing upon their own means at Salisbury, or — as it was then 
styled — New Sarum. Mr. Keightley's personal inquiries, 
circa 1858, elicited the information that the family, now 
extinct, was highly respectable, but not of New Sarum's 
best society. Richardson, in one of his malevolent out- 
bursts, asserted that the sisters were illegitimate ; but, says 
the writer above referred to, " of this circumstance we have 
no other proof, and I am able to add that the tradition of 
Salisbury knows nothing of it." They were, however, cele- 
brated for their personal attractions ; and if the picture 
given in chap. ii. book iv. of Tom Jones accurately repre- 
sents the first Mrs. Fielding, she must have been a most 
charming brunette. Something of the stereotyped charac- 
teristics of a novelist's heroine obviously enter into the 
description ; but the luxuriant black hair, which, cut " to 
comply with the modern Fashion," " curled so gracefully 
in her Neck," the lustrous eyes, the dimple in the right 
cheek, the chin rather full than small, and the complexion 
having " more of the Lilly than of the Rose," but flushing 
with exercise or modesty, are, doubtless, accurately set 
down. In speaking of the nose as " exactly regular," Field- 
ing appears to have deviated slightly from the truth ; for 
we learn from Lady Louisa Stuart that, in this respect, 
Miss Cradock's appearance had "suffered a little" from an 
accident mentioned in Book II. of Amelia, the overturn- 
ing of a chaise. Whether she also possessed the mental 
qualities and accomplishments which fell to the lot of So- 
phia Western, we have no means of determining; but Lady 



38 FIELDING. [chap. 

Stuart is again our authority for saying that she was as 
amiable as she was handsome. 

From the love-poems in the first volume of the Miscel- 
lanies of 1743 — poems which their author declares to have 
been " Productions of the Heart rather than of the Head " 
— it is clear that Fielding had been attached to his future 
wife for several years previous to 1735. One of them, Ad- 
vice to the Nymphs of Neio S m, celebrates the charms 

of Celia — the poetical equivalent for Charlotte — as early 
as 1730 ; another, containing a reference to the player An- 
thony Boheme, who died in 1731, was probably written at 
the same time ; while a third, in which, upon the special 
intervention of Jove himself, the prize of beauty is decreed 
by Venus to the Salisbury sisters, may be of an earlier 
date than any. The year 1730 was the year of his third 
piece, the Author's Farce, and he must therefore have been 
paying his addresses to Miss Cradock not very long after 
his arrival in London. This is a fact to be borne in mind. 
So early an attachment to a good and beautiful girl, living 
no farther off than Salisbury, where his own father prob- 
ably resided, is scarcely consistent with the reckless dissi- 
pation which has been laid to his charge, although, on his 
own showing, he was by no means faultless. But it is a 
part of natures like his to exaggerate their errors in the 
moment of repentance ; and it may be well be that Henry 
Fielding, too, was not so black as he painted himself. Of 
his love verses he says — " this Branch of Writing is what 
I very little pretend to ;" and it would be misleading to 
rate them highly, for, unlike his literary descendant, Mr. 
Thackeray, he never attained to any special quality of 
note. But some of his octosyllabics, if the} 7 cannot be 
called equal to Prior's, fail little below Swift's. "I hate" 
— cries he in one of his pieces — 



n.] _ MARRIAGE. 3» 

" I hate the Town, and all its Ways ; 
Ridotto's, Opera's, and Plays ; 
The Ball, the Ring, the Mall, the Court ; 
Wherever the Beau-Monde resort . . . 
All Coffee-Houses, and their Praters ; 
All Courts of Justice, and Debaters ; 
All Taverns, and the Sots within 'em ; 
All Bubbles, and the Rogues that skin 'em," 

— and so forth, the natural anti-climax being that he loves 
nothing but his "Charmer" at Salisbury. In another, 
which is headed To Celia. — Occasioned by her apprehend- 
ing her House would be broke open, and having an old Fel- 
low to guard it, who sat up all Night, with a Gun with- 
out any Ammunition, and from which it has been con- 
cluded that the Miss Cradocks were their own landlords, 
Venus chides Cupid for neglecting to guard her favour- 
ite : 

" ' Come tell me, Urchin, tell no lies ; 

Where was you hid, in Vhice's eyes ? 

Did you fair Bennefs Breast importune ? 

(I know you dearly love- a Fortune.)' 

Poor Cupid now began to whine ; 

' Mamma, it was no Fault of mine. 

I in a Dimple lay perdue, 

That little Guard-Room chose by you. 

A hundred Loves (all arrn'd) did grace 

The Beauties of her Neck and Face ; 

Thence, by a Sigh I dispossest, 

Was blown to Harry Fielding's Breast ; 

Where I was forc'd all Night to stay, 

Because I could not find my Way. 

But did Mamma know there what Work 

Pve made, how acted like a Turk ; 

What pains, what Torment he endures, 

Which no Physician ever cures, 

She would forgive.' The Goddess smil'd, 

And gently chuck'd her wicked Child, 



40 FIELDING. [chap. 

Bid him go back, and take more Care, 
And give her Service to the Fair." 

Swift, in his Rhapsody on Poetry, 1733, coupled Field- 
ing with Leonard Welsted as an instance of sinking in 
verse. But the foregoing, which he could not have seen, 
is scarcely, if at all, inferior to his own Birthday Poems to 
Stella: 

The history of Fielding's marriage rests so exclusively 
upon the statements of Arthur Murphy that it will be well 
to quote his words in full: 

" Mr. Fielding had not been long a writer for the stage, when he 
married Miss Craddock [dc], a beauty from Salisbury. About that 
time, his mother dying, a moderate estate, at Stower in Dorsetshire, 
devolved to him. To that place he retired with his wife, on whom he 
doated, with a resolution to bid adieu to all the follies and intemper- 
ances to which he had addicted himself in the career of a town life. 
But unfortunately a kind of family-pride here gained an ascendant 
over him ; and he began immediately to vie in splendour with the 
neighbouring country 'squires. With an estate not much above two 
hundred pounds a-year, and his wife's fortune, which did not exceed 
fifteen hundred pounds, he encumbered himself with a large retinue 
of servants, all clad in costly yellow liveries. For their master's hon- 
our, these people could not descend so low as to be careful in their 
apparel, but, in a month or two, were unfit to be seen ; the 'squire's 
dignity required that they should be new-equipped ; and his chief 
pleasure consisting in society and convivial mirth, hospitality threw 
open his doors, and, in less than three years, entertainments, hounds, 
and horses, entirely devoured a little patrimony, which, had it been 
managed with oeconomy, might have secured to him a state of inde- 
pendence for the rest of his life," etc. 

1 Swift afterwards substituted " the laureate [Cibber] " for " Field- 
ing," and appears to have changed his mind as to the latter s merits. 
"I can assure Mr. Fielding,' 1 '' says Mrs. Pilkington in the third and 
last volume of her Memoirs (1754), " the Dean had a high opinion of 
his Wit, which must be a Pleasure to him, as no Man was ever better 
qualified to judge, possessing it so eminently himself." 



ii.] MARRIAGE. 41 

This passage, which has played a conspicuous part in 
all biographies of Fielding, was very carefully sifted by 

Mr. Keightley, who came to the conclusion that it was 
a "mere tissue of error and inconsistency." 1 Without 
going to this length, we must admit that it is manifestly 
incorrect in many respects. If Fielding married in 1735 
(though, as already pointed out, he may have married 
earlier, and retired to the country upon the failure of the 

Universal Gallant), he is certainly inaccurately described 
as " not having been long a writer for the stage," since 
writing for the stage had been his chief occupation for 
seven years. Then again his mother had died as far back 
as April 10, 1718, when he was a boy of eleven; and if 
he had inherited anything from her, he had probably 
been in the enjoyment of it ever since he came of age. 
Furthermore, the statement as to "three years" is at 
variance with the fact that, according to the dedication 
to the Universal Gallant, he was still in London in 
February, 1735, and was back again managing the Hay- 
market in the first months of 1736. Murphy, however, 
may only mean that the " estate " at East Stour was in 
his possession for three years. Mr. Keightley's other 
points — namely, that the " tolerably respectable farm- 
house," in which he is supposed to have lived, was 
scarcely adapted to " splendid entertainments," or " a 
large retinue of servants ;" and that, to be in strict ac- 
cordance with the family arms, the liveries should have 
been not "yellow," but white and blue — must be taken 
for what they are worth. On the whole, the probability 
is, that Murphy's words were only the careless repetition 
of local tittle-tattle, of much of which, as Captain Booth 

1 Some of Mr. Keightley's criticisms were anticipated by Watson. 



42 FIELDING. [chap. 

says pertinently in Amelia, " the only basis is lying." 
The squires of the neighbourhood would naturally regard 
the dashing young gentleman from London with the same 
distrustful hostility that Addison's "Tory Foxhunter" ex- 
hibited to those who differed with him in politics. It 
would be remembered, besides, that the new-comer was 
the son of another and an earlier Fielding of less preten- 
sions, and no real cordiality could ever have existed be- 
tween them. Indeed, it may be assumed that this vv<hs 
the case, for Booth's account of the opposition and ridi- 
cule which he — "a poor renter!" — encountered when he 
enlarged his farm and set up his coach has a distinct per- 
sonal accent. That he was lavish, and lived beyond his 
means, is quite in accordance "with his character. The 
man who, as a Bow Street magistrate, kept open house on 
a pittance, was not likely to be less lavish as a country 
gentleman, with £1500 in his pocket, and newly married 
to a young and handsome wife. " He would have wanted 
money," said Lady Mary, M if his hereditary lands had 
been as extensive as his imagination ;" and there can be 
little doubt that the rafters of the old farm by the Stour, 
with the great locust tree at the back, which is figured 
in Huchins's History of Dorset, rang often to hunting 
choruses, and that not seldom the " dusky Night rod< 
down the Sky " over the prostrate forms of Harry Field- 
ing's guests. 1 But even £1500, and (in spite of Murphy) 

1 An interesting relic of the East Stour residence has recently 
been presented by Mr. Merthyr Guest (through Mr. R. A. Kinglake) 
to the Somersetshire Archaeological Society. It is an oak table of 
solid proportions, and bears on a brass plate the following inscrip- 
tion, emanating from a former owner : " This table belonged to 
Henry Fielding, Esq., novelist. He hunted from East Stour Farm, 
1718, and in three years dissipated his fortune keeping hounds." 



it] MORE PLAYS. 43 

it is by no means clear that he had anything more, could 
scarcely last for ever. Whether his footmen wore yellow 
or not, a few brief months found him again in town. That 
he was able to rent a theatre may perhaps be accepted as 
proof that his profuse hospitalities had not completely 
exhausted his means. 

The moment was a favourable one for a fresh theatri- 
cal experiment. The stage-world was split up into fac- 
tions, the players were disorganised, and everything seemed 
in confusion. Whether Fielding himself conceived the 
idea of making capital out of this state of things, or wheth- 
er it was suggested to him by some of the company who 
had acted Don Quixote in England, it is impossible to 
say. In the first months of 1736, however, he took the 
little French Theatre in the Haymarket, and opened it 
with a company which he christened the " Great Mogul's 
Company of Comedians," who were further described as 
" having dropped from the Clouds." The " Great Mogul " 
was a name sometimes given by playwrights to the elder 
Cibber; but there is no reason for supposing that any 
allusion to him was intended on this occasion. The 
company, with the exception of Macklin, who was play- 
ing at Drury Lane, consisted chiefly of the actors in Don 
Quixote in England; and the first piece was entitled 
Pasquin : a Dramatick Satire on the Times : being the 
Rehearsal of Two Plays, viz., a, Comedy called the Elec- 
tion, and a Tragedy calVd the Life and Death of Common- 
Sense. The form of this work, which belongs to the same 
class as Sheridan's Critic and Buckingham's Rehearsal, 
was probably determined by Fielding's past experience of 

In 1718, it may be observed, Fielding was a boy of eleven. Prob- 
ably the whole of the latter sentence is nothing more than a dis- 
tortion of Murphy. 



44 FIELDING. [chap. 

the public taste. His latest comedy had failed, and its 
predecessors had not been very successful. But his bur- 
lesques had met with a better reception, while the election 
episodes in Don Quixote had seemed to disclose a fresh 
field for the satire of contemporary manners. And in the 
satire of contemporary manners he felt his strength lay. 
The success of Pasquin proved he had not miscalculated, 
for it ran more than forty nights, drawing, if we may be- 
lieve the unknown author of the life of Theophilus Cib- 
ber, numerous and enthusiastic audiences " from Grosve- 
nor, Cavendish, Hanover, and all the other fashionable 
Squares, as also from Pall Mall, and the Inns of Court." 

In regard to plot; the comedy which Pasquin contains 
scarcely deserves the name. It consists of a string of 
loosely-connected scenes, which depict the shameless po- 
litical corruption of the Walpole era with a good deal of 
boldness and humour. The sole difference between the 
" Court party," represented by two Candidates with the 
Bunyan-like names of Lord Place and Colonel Promise, 
and the "Country party, 1 ' whose nominees as Sir Harry 
Fox-Chace and Squire Tankard, is that the former bribe 
openly, the latter indirectly. The Mayor, whose sympa- 
thies are with the " Country party," is finally induced by 
his wife to vote for and return the other side, although 
they are in a minority ; and the play is concluded by the 
precipitate marriage of his daughter with Colonel Prom- 
ise. Mr. Fustian, the Tragic Author, who, with Mr. Sneer- 
well the Critic, is one of the spectators of the rehearsal, 
demurs to the abruptness with which this ingenious catas- 
trophe is brought about, and inquires where the prelimi- 
nary action, of which there is not the slightest evidence 
in the piece itself, has taken place. Thereupon Trap wit, 
the Comic Author, replies as follows, in one of those 



ii.] MORE PLAYS. 45 

passages which show that, whatever Fielding's dramatic 
limitations may have been, he was at least a keen critic of 
stage practice : 

" Trapioit. Why, behind the Scenes, Sir. What, would you have 
every Thing brought upon the Stage ? I intend to bring ours to the 
Dignity of the French Stage ; and I have Horace's Advice of my 
Side ; we have many Tilings both said and done in our Comedies, 
which might be better perform'd behind the Scenes : The French, 
you know, banish all Cruelty from their Stage ; and I don't see why 
we should bring on a Lady in ours, practising all manner of Cruelty 
upon her Lover : beside, Sir, we do not only produce it, but encour- 
age it; for I could name you some Comedies, if I would, where a 
Woman is brought in for four Acts together, behaving to a worthy 
Man in a Manner for which she almost deserves to be hang'd ; and 
in the Fifth, forsooth, she is rewarded with him for a Husband : 
Now, Sir, as I know this hits some Tastes, and am willing to oblige 
all, I have given every Lady a Latitude of thinking mine has be- 
haved in whatever Manner she would have her." 

The part of Lord Place in the Election, after the first 
few nights, was taken by Gibber's daughter, the notorious 
Mrs. Charlotte Charke, whose extraordinary Memoirs an 
amongst the curiosities of eighteenth- century literature 
and whose experiences were as varied as those of any char 
acter in fiction. She does not seem to have acted in tin 
Life and Death of Common- Sense, the rehearsal of whicli 
followed that of the Election. This is a burlesque of the 
Tom Thumb type, much of which is written in vigorous 
blank verse. Queen Common-Sense is conspired against 
by Firebrand, Priest of the Sun, by Law, and by Physic. 
Law is incensed because she has endeavoured to make his 
piebald jargon intelligible; Physic because she has prefer- 
red Water Gruel to all his drugs ; and Firebrand because 
she would restrain the Power of Priests. Some of the 
strokes must have gone home to those receptive hearers 



40 FIELDING. [chap. 

who, as one contemporary account informs us, " were dull 
enough not only to think they contain'd Wit and Humour, 
but Truth also " : 

" Queen Common- Sense. My Lord of Laio, I sent for you this 
morning ; 
I have a strange Petition given to me ; 
Two Men, it seems, have lately been at Law 
For an Estate, which both of them have lost, 
And their Attorneys now divide between them. 

" Law. Madam, these things will happen in the Law. 

" Q. C. S. Will they, my Lord ? then better we had none : 
But I have also heard a sweet Bird sing, 
That Men, unable to discharge their Debts 
At a short Warning, being sued for them, 
Have, with both Power and Will their Debts to pay, 
Lain all their Lives in Prison for their Costs. 

" Law. That may perhaps be some poor Person's Case, 
Too mean to entertain your Royal Ear. 

" Q. C. S. My Lord, while I am Queen I shall not think 
One Man too mean, or poor, to be redress'd ; 
Moreover, Lord, I am inform'd your Laws 
Are grown so large, and daily yet encrease, 
That the great Age of old Methmalem 
Would scarce suffice to read your Statutes out." 

There is also much more than merely transitory satire 
in the speech of " Firebrand" to the Queen : 

" Firebrand. Ha ! do you doubt it ? nay, if you doubt that, 
I will prove nothing — But my zeal inspires me, 
And I will tell you, Madam, you yourself 
Are a most deadly Enemy to the Sun, 
And all his Priests have greatest Cause to wish 
You had been never born. 

" Q. C. S. Ha ! say'st thou, Priest ? 
Then know I honour and adore the Sun ! 
And when I see his Light, and feel his Warmth, 
I glow with flaming Gratitude toward him ; 



ii] MORE PLAYS. 41 

But know, I never will adore a Priest, 

Who wears Pride's. Face beneath Religion's Mask, 

And makes a Pick-Lock of his Piety, 

To steal away the Liberty of Mankind. 

But while I live, I'll never give thee Power. 

" Firebrand. Madam, our Power is not deriv'd from you, 
Nor any one : 'Twas sent us in a box 
From the great Sun himself, and Carriage paid ; 
Phaeton brought it when he overturn'd 
The Chariot of the Sun into the Sea. 

" Q. C. S. Shew me the Instrument, and let me read it. 

" Fireb. Madam, you cannot read it, for being thrown 
Into the Sea, the Water has no damag'd it, 
That none but Priests could ever read it since." 

In the end, Firebrand stabs Common - Sense, bat her 
Ghost frightens Ignorance off the Stage, upon which Sneer- 
well says — " I am glad you make Common-Sense get the 
better at last ; I was under terrible Apprehensions for your 
Moral." "Faith, Sir," says Fustian, "this is almost the 
only Play where she has got the better lately." And so 
the piece closes. But it would be wrong to quit it with- 
out some reference to the numberless little touches by 
which, throughout the whole, the humours of dramatic 
life behind the scenes are ironically depicted. The Comic 
Poet is arrested on his way from "King's Coffee-House" 
and the claim being " for upwards of Four Pound," it is 
at first supposed that " he will hardly get Bail." He is 
subsequently inquired after by a Gentlewoman in a Riding- 
Hood, whom he passes off as a Lady of Quality, but who, 
in reality, is bringing him a clean shirt. There are diffi- 
culties with one of the Ghosts, who has a " Church-yard 
Cough," and " is so Lame he can hardly walk the Stage ;" 
while another comes to rehearsal without being properly 
floured, because the stage barber has gone to Drury Lane 



48 FIELDING. [chap. 

"to shave the Sultan in the New Entertainment." On the 
other hand, the Ghost of Queen Common-Sense appears 
before she is killed, and is with some difficulty persuaded 
that her action is premature. Part of "the Mob" play 
truant to see a show in the park ; Law, straying without 
the play-house passage, is snapped up by a Lord Chief- 
Justice's Warrant ; and a Jew carries off one of the Maids 
of Honour. These little incidents, together with the un- 
blushing realism of the Pots of Porter that are made to 
do duty for wine, and the extra two-pennyworth of Light- 
ning that is ordered against the first night, are all in the 
spirit of that inimitable picture of the Strolling Actresses 
dressing in a Barn, which Hogarth gave to the world two 
years later, and which, very possibly, may have borrowed 
some of its inspiration from Fielding's " dramatic satire." 

There is every reason to suppose that the profits of Pas- 
quin were far greater than those of any of its author's pre- 
vious efforts. In a rare contemporary caricature, preserved 
in the British Museum, 1 the "Queen of Common-Sense" 
is shown presenting " Henry Fielding, Esq.," with a well- 
filled purse, while to " Harlequin " (John Rich of Covent 
Garden) she extends a halter; and in some doggerel lines 
underneath, reference is made to the " show'rs of Gold " 
resulting from the piece. This, of course, might be no 
more than a poetical fiction; but Fielding himself attests 
the pecuniary success of Pasquin in the Dedication to 
Tumble- Down Dick, and Mrs. Charke's statement in her 
Memoirs that her salary for acting the small part of Lord 
Place was four guineas a week, " with an Indulgence in 
Point of Charges at her Benefit" by which she cleared 
sixty guineas, certainly points to a prosperous exchequer. 
Fielding's own benefit, as appears from the curious ticket 
1 Political and Personal Satires, No. 2287. 



ii.] MORE PLAYS. 49 

attributed to Hogarth and fac-similed by A. M. Ireland, 
took place on April 25, but we have no record of the 
amount of his gains. Mrs. Charke farther says that " soon 
after Pasquin began to droop" Fielding produced Lillo's 
Fatal Curiosity, in which she acted Agnes. This tragedy, 
founded on a Cornish story, is one of remarkable power 
and passion ; but upon its first appearance it made little 
impression, although in the succeeding year it was acted 
to greater advantage in combination with another satirical 
medley by Fielding, the Historical Register for the Year 
1736. 

Like most sequels, the Historical Register had neither 
the vogue nor the wit of its predecessor. It was only 
half as long, and it was even more disconnected in char- 
acter. " Harmonious Cibber," as Swift calls him, whose 
"preposterous Odes" had already been ridiculed in Pas- 
quin and the Author's Farce, was once more brought on 
the stage as Ground-Ivy, for his alterations of Shakspeare ; 
and under the name of Pistol, Theophilus Cibber is made 
to refer to the contention between his second wife, Arne's 
sister, and Mrs. Clive, for the honour of playing "Polly" 
in the Beggar's Opera, a play-house feud which at the 
latter end of 1736 had engaged "the Town" almost as 
seriously as the earlier rivalry of Faustina and Cuzzoni. 
This continued raillery of the Cibbers is, as Fielding him- 
self seems to have felt, a " Jest a little overacted ;" but 
there is one scene in the piece of undeniable freshness 
and humour, to wit, that in which Cock, the famous sales- 
man of the Piazzas — the George Robins of his day — is 
brought on the stage as Mr. Auctioneer Hen (a part taken 
by Mrs. Charke). His wares, "collected by the indefati- 
gable Pains of that celebrated Virtuoso, Peter Humdrum, 
Esq.," include such desirable items as "curious Remnants 
3 



50 FIELDIXCt. [chap. 

of Political Honesty, 7 ' "delicate Pieces of Patriotism," 
Modesty (which does not obtain a bid), Courage, Wit, and 
"" a very neat clear Conscience " of great capacity, " which 
-has been worn by a Judge, and a Bishop." The " Cardi- 
nal Virtues" are then put up, and eighteen-pence is bid 
for them. But after they have been knocked down at 
this extravagant sum, the buyer complains that he had un- 
derstood the auctioneer to say "a Cardinal's Virtues," and 
'that the lot he has purchased includes " Temperance and 
'Chastity, and a Pack of Stuff that he would not give three 
Farthings for." The whole of this scene is " admirable 
fooling ;" and it was afterwards impudently stolen by 
Theophilus Cibber for his farce of the Auction. The 
Historical Register concludes with a dialogue between 
Quidam, in whom the audience recognised Sir Robert 
Walpole, and four patriots, to whom he gives a purse 
which has an instantaneous effect upon their opinions. 
All five then go off dancing to Quidam's fiddle ; and it is 
explained that they have holes in their pockets through 
which the money will fall as they dance, enabling the 
donor to pick it all up again, " and so not lose one Half- 
penny by his Generosity." 

The frank effrontery of satire like the foregoing had by 
this time begun to attract the attention of the Ministry, 
whose withers had already been sharply wrung by Pas- 
quin ; and it has been conjectured that the ballet of Qui- 
dam and the Patriots played no small part in precipitat- 
ing the famous "Licensing Act" which was passed a few 
weeks afterwards. Like the marriage which succeeded 
the funeral of Hamlet's father, it certainly " followed hard 
upon." But the reformation of the stage had already 
been contemplated by the Legislature ; and two years be- 
fore Sir John Barnard had brought in a bill " to restrain 



ii.] LICENSING ACT. 51 

the number of houses for playing of Interludes, and for 
the better regulating of common Players of Interludes." 
This, however, had been abandoned, because it was pro- 
posed to add a clause enlarging the power of the Lord 
Chamberlain in licensing plays, an addition to which the 
introducer of the measure made strong objection. He 
thought the power of the Lord Chamberlain already too 
great, and in support of his argument he instanced its 
wanton exercise in the case of Gay's Polly, the represen- 
tation of which had been suddenly prohibited a few years 
earlier. But Pasquin and the Register brought the ques- 
tion of dramatic lawlessness again to the front, and a bill 
was hurriedly drawn, one effect of which was to revive the 
very provision that Sir John Barnard had opposed. The 
history of this affair is exceedingly obscure, and in all 
probability it has never been completely revealed. The 
received or authorised version is to be found in Coxe's 
Life of Walpole. After dwelling on the offence given to 
the Government by Pasquin, the writer goes on to say that 
Giffard, the manager of Goodman's Fields, brought Wal- 
pole a farce called The Golden Rump, which had been 
proposed for exhibition. Whether he did this to extort 
money, or to ask advice, is not clear. In either case, Wal- 
pole is said to have " paid the profits which might have 
accrued from the performance, and detained the copy." 
He then made a compendious selection of the treasonable 
and profane passages it contained. These he submitted 
to independent members of both parties, and afterwards 
read them in the House itself. The result was that by 
way of amendment to the "Vagrant Act" of Anne's 
reign, a bill was prepared limiting the number of theatres, 
and compelling all dramatic writers to obtain a license 
from the Lord Chamberlain. Such is Coxe's account; 



52 FIELDING. [chap. 

but notwithstanding its circumstantial character, it has 
been insinuated in the sham memoirs of the younger Cib- 
ber, and it is plainly asserted in the Rambler's Magazine 
for 1787, that certain preliminary details have been con- 
veniently suppressed. It is alleged that Walpole himself 
caused the farce in question to be written, and to be of- 
fered to Giffard, for the purpose of introducing his scheme 
of reform ; and the suggestion is not without a certain 
remote plausibility. As may be guessed, however, The 
Golden Rumjj cannot be appealed to. It was never print- 
ed, although its title is identical with that of a caricature 
published in March, 173", and fully described in the Gen- 
tleman's Magazine for that month. If the play at all re- 
sembled the design, it must have been obscene and scur- 
rilous in the extreme. 1 

Meanwhile the new bill, to which it had given rise, 
passed rapidly through both Houses. Report speaks of 
animated discussions and warm opposition. But there 
are no traces of any divisions, or petitions against it, and 
the only speech which has survived is the very elaborate 
and careful oration delivered in the Upper House by Lord 
Chesterfield. The " second Cicero " — as Sylvanus Urban 
styles him — opposed the bill upon the ground that it 
would affect the liberty of the press ; and that it was prac- 
tically a tax upon the chief property of men of letters, 
their wit — a "precarious dependence'' — which (he thanked 

1 Horace Walpole, in his Memoirs of the Last Ten Years of t/ie 
Reign of George II , says (vol. i. p. 12), " I have in my possession the 
imperfect copy of this piece as I found it among my father's papers 
after his death. 1 ' He calls it Fielding's ; but no importance can 
be attached to the statement. There is a copy of the caricature in 
the British Museum Print Room (Political and Personal Satires, 
No. 2327). 



il] LICENSING ACT. 53 

God) my Lords were not obliged to rely upon. He dwelt 
also upon the value of the stage as a fearless censor of vice 
and folly ; and he quoted with excellent effect but doubt- 
ful accuracy the famous answer of the Prince of Conti 
[Conde] to Moliere [Louis XIV.] when Tartuffe was in- 
terdicted at the instance of M. de Lamoignon : " It is true, 
Moliere, Harlequin ridicules Heaven, and exposes religion ; 
but you have done much worse — you have ridiculed the 
first minister of religion." This, although not directly 
advanced for the purpose, really indicated the head and 
front of Fielding's offending in Pasquin and the Histori- 
cal Register, and although in Lord Chesterfield's speech 
the former is ironically condemned, it may well be that 
Fielding, whose Don Quixote had been dedicated to his 
Lordship, was the wire-puller in this case, and supplied 
this very illustration. At all events it is entirely in the 
spirit of Firebrand's words in Pasquin : 

" Speak boldly ; by the Powers I serve, I swear 
You speak in Safety, even tho' you speak 
Against the Gods, provided that you speak 
Not against Priests." 

But the feeling of Parliament in favour of drastic legis- 
lation was even stronger than the persuasive periods of 
Chesterfield, and on the 21st of June, 1737, the bill re- 
ceived the royal assent. 

With its passing Fielding's career as a dramatic author 
practically closed. In his dedication of the Historical Regis- 
ter to " the Publick," he had spoken of his desire to beautify 
and enlarge his little theatre, and to procure a better com- 
pany of actors ; and he had added — " If Nature hath given 
me any Talents at ridiculing Vice and Imposture, I shall 
not be indolent, nor afraid of exerting them, while the 



54 FIELDING. [chap. 

Liberty of the Press and Stage subsists, that is to say, 
while we have any Liberty left amongst us." To all these 
projects the " Licensing Act " effectively put an end ; and 
the only other plays from his pen which were produced 
subsequently to this date were the " Wedding Day," 1743,. 
and the posthumous Good-Natured Man, 1779, both of 
which, as is plain from the Preface to the Miscellanies, 
were amongst his earliest attempts. In the little farce of 
Miss Lucy in Town, 1742, he had, he says, but "a very 
small Share." Besides these, there are three hasty and 
flimsy pieces which belong to the early part of 1737. The 
first of these, Tumble-Down Dick ; or, Phaeton in the Suds, 
was a dramatic sketch in ridicule of the unmeaning En- 
tertainments and Harlequinades of John Rich at Covent 
Garden. This was ironically dedicated to Rich, under his 
stage name of "John Lun," and from the dedication it 
appears that Rich had brought out an unsuccessful satire 
on Pasquin called Marforio. The other two were Eury- 
dice, a profane and pointless farce, afterwards printed by 
its author (in anticipation of Beaumarchais) " as it was 
d — mned at the Theatre-Royal in Drury-Lane ;" and a few 
detached scenes in which, under the title of Eurydice 
Hissed ; or, a Word to the Wise, its untoward fate was 
attributed to the " frail Promise of uncertain Friends." 
But even in these careless and half-considered productions 
there are happy strokes ; and one scarcely looks to find 
such nervous and sensible lines in a mere a propos as these 
from Eurydice Hissed : 

" Yet grant it shou'd succeed, grant that by Chance, 
Or by the Whim and Madness of the Town, 
A Farce without Contrivance, without Sense 
Should run to the Astonishment of Mankind ; 
Think how you will be read in After-times, 



il] LICENSING ACT. 55 

When Friends are not, and the impartial Judge 
Shall with the meanest Scribbler rank your Name ; 
Who would not rather wish a Butler's fame, 
Distress'd, and poor in every thing but Merit, 
Than be the blundering Laureat to a Court ?" 

Self-accusatory passages such as this — and there are 
others like it — indicate a higher ideal of dramatic writing 
than Fielding is held to have attained, and probably the 
key to them is to be found in that reaction of better judg- 
ment which seems invariably to have followed his most 
reckless efforts. It was a part of his sanguine and impul- 
sive nature to be as easily persuaded that his work was 
worthless as that it was excellent. "When," says Murphy, 
" he was not under the immediate urgency of want, they, 
who were intimate with him, are ready to aver that he had 
a mind greatly superior to anything mean or little; when 
his finances were exhausted, he was not the most elegant 
in his choice of the means to redress himself, and he would 
instantly exhibit a farce or a puppet-shew in the Hay mar- 
ket theatre, which was wholly inconsistent with the pro- 
fession he had embarked in." The quotation displays all 
Murphy's loose and negligent way of dealing with his 
facts ; for, with the exception of Miss Lucy in Town, which 
can scarcely be ranked amongst his w 7 orks at all, there is 
absolutely no trace of Fielding's having exhibited either 
" puppet-shew " or " farce " after seriously adopting the 
law as a profession, nor does there appear to have been 
much acting at the Hayinarket for some time after his 
management had closed in 1737. Still, his superficial 
characteristics, which do not depend so much upon Mur- 
phy as upon those " who were intimate with him," are 
probably accurately described, and they sufficiently account 

for many of the obvious discordances of his work and life. 
E 



66 FIELDING. [chap. ii. 

That he was fully conscious of something higher than his 
actual achievement as a dramatist is clear from his own 
observation in later life, " that he left off writing for the 
stage, when he ought to have begun ;" — an utterance 
which (we shrewdly suspect) has prompted not a little 
profitless speculation as to whether, if he had continued to 
write plays, they would have been equal to, or worse than, 
his novels. The discussion would be highly interesting, if 
there were the slightest chance that it could be attended 
with any satisfactory result. But the truth is, that the 
very materials are wanting. Fielding " left off writing for 
the stage " when he was under thirty ; Tom Jones was pub- 
lished in 1749, when he was more than forty. His plays 
were written in haste ; his novels at leisure, and when, for 
the most part, he was relieved from that " immediate ur- 
gency of want," which, according to Murphy, character- 
ised his younger days. If — as has been suggested — we 
could compare a novel written at thirty with a play of the 
same date, or a play written at forty with Tom Jones, the 
comparison might be instructive, although even then con- 
siderable allowances would have to be made for the essen- 
tial difference between plays and novels. But, as we can- 
not make such a comparison, further inquiry is simply 
waste of time. All we can safely affirm is, that the plays 
of Fielding's youth did not equal the fictions of his matu- 
rity ; and that, of those plays, the comedies were less suc- 
cessful than the farces and burlesques. Among other rea- 
sons for this latter difference one chiefly may be given — 
that in the comedies he sought to reproduce the artificial 
world of Congreve and Wycherley, while in the burlesques 
and farces he depicted the world in which he lived. 



CHAPTER III. 



The Historical Register and Eurydice Hiss'd were pub- 
lished together in June, 1737. By this time the " Licens- 
ing Act " was passed, and the " Grand Mogul's Company " 
dispersed for ever. Fielding was now in his thirty-first 
year, with a wife and probably a daughter depending on 
him for support. In the absence of any prospect that 
he would be able to secure a maintenance as a dramatic 
writer, he seems to have decided, in spite of his compara- 
tively advanced age, to revert to the profession for which 
he had originally been intended, and to qualify himself for 
the Bar. Accordingly, at the close of the year, he became 
a student of the Middle Temple, and the books of that so- 
ciety contain the following record of his admission i 1 

[574 G] 1 Nov™ 1737. 

Henricus Fielding, de Hast Stour in Com Dorset Ar, filius 
et hceres apparens Brig : Gen 11 * : Edmundi Fielding admis- 
sus est in Societatem Medii Templi Lond specialiter et ob- 
ligator una cum etc. 

Et dat pro fine 4- 0. 0. 

It may be noted, as Mr. Keightley has already observed, 
that Fielding is described in this entry as of East Stour, 

1 This differs slightly from previous transcripts, having been veri- 
fied at the Middle Temple. 
3* 



• 



58 FIELDING. [chap. 

" which would seem to indicate that he still retained his 
property at that place;" and further, that his father is 
spoken of as a " brigadier-general," whereas (according to 
the Gentleman 's Magazine) he had been made a major- 
general in December, 1735. Of discrepancies like these 
it is idle to attempt any explanation. But, if Murphy is 
to be believed, Fielding devoted himself henceforth with 
remarkable assiduity to the study of law. The old irreg- 
ularity of life, it is alleged, occasionally asserted itself, 
though without checking the energy of his application. 
"This," says his first biographer, "prevailed in him to 
such a degree, that he has been frequently known, by his 
intimates, to retire late at night from a tavern to his cham- 
bers, and there read, and make extracts from, the most ab- 
struse authors, for several hours before he went to bed ; so 
powerful were the vigour of his constitution and the ac- 
tivity of his mind." It is to this passage, no doubt, that 
we owe the picturesque wet towel and inked ruffles with 
which Mr. Thackeray has decorated him in Pendennis ; 
and, in all probability, a good deal of graphic writing from 
less able pens respecting his modus Vivendi as a Templar. 
In point of fact, nothing is known with certainty respect- 
ing his life at this period; and what it would really con- 
cern us to learn — namely, whether by "chambers" it is to 
be understood that he was living alone, and, if so, where 
Mrs. Fielding was at the time of these protracted vigils — 
Murphy has not told us. Perhaps she was safe all the 
while at East Stour, or with her sisters at Salisbury. Hav- 
ing no precise information, however, it can only be record- 
ed that, in spite of the fitful outbreaks above referred to, 
Fielding applied himself to the study of his profession 
with all the vigour of a man who has to make up for lost 
time; and that, when on the 20th of June, 1740, the day 



in.] THE "CHAMPION." 59 

came for his being " called," he was very fairly equipped 
with legal knowledge. That he had also made many 
friends amongst his colleagues of Westminster Hall is 
manifest from the number of lawyers who figure in the 
subscription list of the Miscellanies. 

To what extent he was occupied by literary work dur- 
ing his probationary period it is difficult to say. Murphy 
speaks vaguely of " a large number of fugitive political 
tracts ;" but unless the Essay on Conversation, advertised 
by Lawton Gilliver in 1737, be the same as that after- 
wards reprinted in the Miscellanies, there is no positive 
record of anything until the issue of True Greatness, an 
epistle to George Dodington, in January, 1741, though he 
may, of course, have written much anonymously. Among 
newspapers, the one Murphy had in mind was probably 
the Champion, the first number of which is dated Novem- 
ber 15, 1739, two years after his admission to the Middle 
Temple as a student. On the whole, it seems most likely, 
as Mr. Keightley conjectures, that his chief occupation in 
the interval was studying law, and that he must have been 
living upon the residue of his wife's fortune or his own 
means, in which case the establishment of the above peri- 
odical may mark the exhaustion of his resources. 

The Champion is a paper on the model of the elder 
essayists. It was issued, like the Tatler, on Tuesdays, 
Thursdays, and Saturdays. Murphy says that Fielding's 
part in it cannot now be ascertained ; but as the " Adver- 
tisement" to the edition in two volumes of 1741 states ex- 
pressly that the papers signed C. and L. are the " Work 
of one Hand," and as a number of those signed C. are un- 
mistakably Fielding's, it is hard to discover where the dif- 
ficulty lay. The papers signed C. and L. are by far the 
most numerous, the majority of the remainder being dis- 



60 FIELDING. [chap. 

tinguished by two stars, or the signature " Lilbourne." 
These are understood to have been from the pen of James 
Ralph, whose poem of Night gave rise to a stinging coup- 
let in the Dunciad, but who was nevertheless a man of 
parts, and an industrious writer. As will be remembered, 
he had contributed a prologue to the Temple Beau, so 
that his association with Fielding must have been of some 
standing. Besides Ralph's essays in the Champion, he 
was mainly responsible for the Index to the Times which 
accompanied each number, and consisted of a series of 
brief paragraphs on current topics, or the last- new book. 
In this way Glover's London, Boyse's Deity, Somervile's 
Hobbinol, Lillo's Elmeric, Dyer's Ruins of Rome, and oth- 
er of the very minor jioetce minores of the day, were com- 
mented upon. These notes and notices, however, were 
only a subordinate feature of the Champion, which, like 
its predecessors, consisted chiefly of essays and allegories, 
social, moral, and political, the writers of which were sup- 
posed to be members of an imaginary " Vinegar family," 
described in the initial paper. Of these the most promi- 
nent was Captain Hercules Vinegar, who took all questions 
relating to the Army, Militia, Trained-Bands, and " fight- 
ing Part of the Kingdom." His father, Nehemiah Vine- 
gar, presided over history and politics; his uncle, Coun- 
sellor Vinegar, over law and judicature; and Dr. John 
Vinegar, his cousin, over medicine and natural philosophy. 
To others of the family — including Mrs. Joan Vinegar, 
who was charged with domestic affairs — were allotted 
classic literature, poetry and the Drama, and fashion. This 
elaborate scheme was not very strictly adhered to, and the 
chief writer of the group is Captain Hercules. 

Shorn of the contemporary interest which formed the 
chief element of its success when it was first published, it 



hi.] THE "CHAMPION." 61 

must be admitted that, in the present year of grace, the 
Champion is hard reading. A kind of lassitude — a sense 
of uncongenial task-work — broods heavily over Fielding's 
contributions, except the one or two in which he is quick- 
ened into animation by his antagonism to Cibber; and al- 
though, with our knowledge of his after achievements, it 
is possible to trace some indications of his yet unrevealed 
powers, in the absence of such knowledge it would be dif- 
ficult to distinguish the Champion from the hundred-and- 
one forgotten imitators of the Spectator and Tatler, whose 
names have been so patiently chronicled by Dr. Nathan 
Drake. There is, indeed, a certain obvious humour in the 
account of Captain Vinegar's famous club, which he had 
inherited from Hercules, and which had the enviable prop- 
erty of falling of itself upon any knave in company, and 
there is a dash of the Tom Jones manner in the noisy ac- 
tivity of that excellent housewife Mrs. Joan. Some of the 
lighter papers, such as the one upon the "Art of Puffing," 
are amusing enough ; and of the visions, that which is 
based upon Lucian, and represents Charon as stripping his 
freight of all their superfluous incumbrances in order to 
lighten his boat, has a double interest, since it contains ref- 
erences not only to Cibber, but also (though this appears 
to have been hitherto overlooked) to Fielding himself. 
The "tall Man," who at Mercury's request strips off his 
" old Grey Coat with great Readiness," but refuses to part 
with " half his Chin," which the shepherd of souls regards 
as false, is clearly intended for the writer of the paper, 
even without the confirmation afforded by the subsequent 
allusions to his connection with the stage. His " length of 
chin and nose," sufficiently apparent in his portrait, was 
a favourite theme for contemporary personalities. Of the 
moral essays, the most remarkable are a set of four papers, 



62 FIELDING. [chap. 

entitled An Apology for the Clergy, which may perhaps 
be regarded as a set-off against the sarcasms of Pasquin 
on priestcraft. They depict, with a great deal of knowl- 
edge and discrimination, the pattern priest as Fielding con- 
ceived him. To these may be linked an earlier picture, 
taken from life, of a country parson who, in his simple and 
dignified surroundings, even more closely resembles the 
Vicar of Wakefield than Mr. Abraham Adams. Some of 
the more general articles contain happy passages. In one 
there is an admirable parody of the Norman-French jar- 
gon, which in those days added superfluous obscurity to 
legal utterances ; while another, on " Charity," contains a 
forcible exposition of the inexpediency, as well as inhu- 
manity, of imprisonment for debt. References to contem- 
poraries, the inevitable Cibber excepted, are few, and these 
seem mostly from the pen of Ralph. The following, from 
that of Fielding, is notable as being one of the earliest 
authoritative testimonies to the merits of Hogarth : " I 
esteem (says he) the ingenious Mr. Hogarth as one of the 
most useful Satyrists any Age hath produced. In his ex- 
cellent Works you see the delusive Scene exposed with all 
the Force of Humour, and, on castiug your Eyes on another 
Picture, you behold the dreadful and fatal Consequence. 
I almost dare affirm that those two Works of his, which 
he calls the Rake's and the Harlot's Progress, are calcu- 
lated more to serve the Cause of Virtue, and for the Pres- 
ervation of Mankind, than all the Folio's of Morality which 
have been ever written ; and a sober Family should no 
more be without them, than without the Whole Duty of 
Man in their House." He returned to the same theme in 
the Preface to Joseph Andrews with a still apter phrase of 
appreciation : " It hath been thought a vast Commenda- 
tion of a Painter, to say his Figures seem to breathe ; but 



in] THE "CHAMPION." G3 

surely, it is a much greater and nobler Applause, that they 
appear to think." 1 

When the Champion was rather more than a year old, 
Colley Cibber published his famous Apology. To the 
attacks made upon him by Fielding at different times he 
had hitherto printed no reply — perhaps he had no oppor- 
tunity of doing so. But in his eighth chapter, when 
speaking of the causes which led to the Licensing Act, he 
takes occasion to refer to his assailant in terms which 
Fielding must have found exceedingly galling. He care- 
fully abstained from mentioning his name, on the ground 
that it could do him no good, and was of no importance; 
but he described him as " a broken Wit," who had sought 
notoriety "by raking the Channel" (i. e., Kennel), and 
" pelting his Superiors." He accused him, with a scandal- 
ised gravity that is as edifying as Chesterfield's irony, of 
attacking "Religion, Laws, Government, Priests, Judges, 
and Ministers." He called him, either in allusion to his 
stature, or his pseudonym in the Champion, a "Herculean 
Satyrist," a " Drawcansir in Wit " — " who, to make his 
Poetical Fame immortal, like another Erostratus, set Fire to 
his Stage, by writing up to an Act of Parliament to demolish 
it. I shall not," he continues, " give the particular Strokes 
of his Ingenuity a Chance to be remembered, by reciting 
them ; it may be enough to say, in general Terms, they 
were so openly flagrant, that the Wisdom of the Legislat- 
ure thought it high time to take a proper Notice of them." 

1 Fielding occasionally refers to Hogarth for the pictorial types of 
his characters. Bridget Allworthy, he tells us, resembled the starched 
prude in Morning ; and Mrs. Partridge and Parson Thwackura have 
their originals in the Harlots Progress. It was Fielding, too, who 
said that the Enraged Musician was " enough to make a man deaf to 
look at" {Voyage to Lisbon, 1*755, p. 50). 



U FIELDING. [chap. 

Fielding was not the man to leave such a challenge un- 
answered. In the Champion for April 22, 1740, and two 
subsequent papers, he replied with a slashing criticism of 
the Apology, in which, after demonstrating that it must 
be written in English because it was written in no other 
language, he gravely proceeds to point out examples of 
the author's superiority to grammar and learning — and in 
general, subjects its pretentious and slip-shod style to a mi- 
nute and highly detrimental examination. In a further 
paper he returns to the charge by a mock trial of one 
" Col. Apol. (i. e.y CoWey- Apology), arraigning him for that, 
"not having the Fear of Grammar before his Eyes," he 
had committed an unpardonable assault upon his mother- 
tongue. Fielding's knowledge of legal forms and phrase- 
ology enabled him to make a happy parody of court pro- 
cedure, and Mr. Lawrence says that this particular "jeu 
d? esprit obtained great celebrity." But the happiest stroke 
in the controversy — as it seems to us — is one which es- 
caped Mr. Lawrence, and occurs in the paper already re- 
ferred to, where Charon and Mercury are shown denuding 
the luckless passengers by the Styx of their surplus imped- 
imenta. Among the rest approaches " an elderly Gentle- 
man with a Piece of wither'd Laurel on his head." From 
a little book, which he is discovered (when stripped) to 
have bound close to his heart, and which bears the title of 
Love in a Middle — an unsuccessful pastoral produced by 
Gibber at Drury Lane in 1729 — it is clear that this per- 
sonage is intended for none other than the Apologist, who, 
after many entreaties, is finally compelled to part with his 
treasure. " I was surprized," continues Fielding, " to see 
him pass Examination w 7 ith his Laurel on, and was assured 
by the Standers by that Mercury would have taken it off, 
if he had seen it." 



in.] THE "CHAMPION." 65 

These attacks in the Champion do not appear to have 
received any direct response from Gibber. But they were 
reprinted in a rambling production issued from " Curll's 
chaste press" in 1740, and entitled the Tryal of Colley 
Cibber, Comedian, &c. At the end of this there is a short 
address to " the Self-duWd Captain Hercules Vinegar, 
alias Buffoon," to the effect that " the malevolent Flings 
exhibited by him and his Man Ralph,' 1 '' have been faith- 
fully reproduced. Then comes the following curious and 
not very intelligible "Advertisement": 

" If the Ingenious Henry Fielding Esq. ; (Son of the Hon. Lieut. 
General Fielding, who upon his Return from his Travels entered 
himself of the Temple in order to study the Law, and married one 
of the pretty Miss Cradocks of Salisbury) will own himself the 
Author of 18 strange Things called Tragical Comedies and Comical 
Tragedies, lately advertised by J. Watts, of Wild -Court, Printer, he 
shall be mentioned in Capitals in the Third Edition of Mr. Cibber's 
Life, and likewise be placed among the Poetce minores Dramatici of 
the Present Age : Then will both his Name and Writings be re- 
membered on Record in the immortal Poetical Register written by 
Mr. Giles Jacob." 

The " poetical register " indicated was the book of that 
name, containing the Lives and, Characteristics of the Eng- 
lish Dramatic Poets, which Mr. Giles Jacob, an industrious 
literary hack, had issued in 1723. Mr. Lawrence is prob 
ably right in his supposition, based upon the foregoing 
advertisement, that Fielding " had openly expressed re- 
sentment at being described by Cibber as ' a broken wit/ 
without being mentioned by name." He never seems to 
have wholly forgotten his animosity to the actor, to whom 
there are frequent references in Joseph Andrews ; and, as 
late as 1749, he is still found harping on "the withered 
laurel " in a letter to Lyttelton. Even in his last work, 



06 FIELDING. [chap. 

the Voyage to Lisbon*, Cibber's name is mentioned. The 
origin of this protracted fend is obscure ; but, apart from 
want of sympathy, it must probably be sought for in some 
early misunderstanding between the two in their capacities 
of manager and author. As regards Theophilns Cibber, 
his desertion of Highmore was sufficient reason for the 
ridicule cast upon him in the Author s Farce and else- 
where. With Mrs. Charke, the Laureate's intractable and 
eccentric daughter, Fielding was naturally on better terms. 
She was, as already stated, a member of the Great Mogul's 
Company, and it is worth noting that some of the sar- 
casms in Pasquin against her father were put into the 
mouth of Lord Place, whose part was taken by this undu- 
tiful child. All things considered, both in this contro- 
versy and the later one with Pope, Cibber did not come 
off worst. His few hits were personal and unscrupulous, 
and they were probably far more deadly in their effects 
than any of the ironical attacks which his adversaries, on 
their part, directed against his poetical ineptitude or halt- 
ing " parts of speech." Despite his superlative coxcomb- 
ry and egotism, he was, moreover, a man of no mean abil- 
ities. His Careless Husband is a far better acting play 
than any of Fielding's, and his Apology, which even John- 
son allowed to be " w T ell-done," is valuable in many re- 
spects, especially for its account of the contemporary 
stage. In describing an actor or actress he had few equals 
— witness his skilful portrait of Nokes, and his admirably 
graphic vignette of Mrs. Verbruggen as that "finish'd Im- 
pertinent," Melantha, in Dryden's Marriage a-la-Mode. 

The concluding paper in the collected edition of the 
Champion, published in 1741, is dated June 19, 1740. 
On the day following Fielding was called to the Bar by 
the benchers of the Middle Temple, and (says Mr. Law- 



in.] THE "CHAMPION." 67 

rence) " chambers were assigned him in Pump Court." 
Simultaneously with this, his regular connection with jour- 
nalism appears to have ceased, although from his state- 
ment in the Preface to the Miscellanies — that " as long as 
from June, 1741," he had "desisted from writing one Syl- 
lable in the ' Champion, or any other public Paper " — it 
may perhaps be inferred that up to that date he continued 
to contribute now and then. This, nevertheless, is by no 
means clear. His last utterance in the published volumes 
is certainly in a sense valedictory, as it refers to the posi- 
tion acquired by the Champion, and the difficulty experi- 
enced in establishing it. Incidentally, it pays a high com- 
pliment to Pope, by speaking of "the divine Translation 
of the Iliad, which he [Fielding] has lately with no Dis- 
advantage to the Translator compared with the Original," 
the point of the sentence so impressed by its typography 
being apparently directed against those critics who had 
condemned Pope's work without the requisite knowledge 
of Greek. From the tenor of the rest of the essay it may, 
however, be concluded that the writer was taking leave of 
his enterprise ; and, according to a note by Boswell, in his 
Life of Johnson, it seems that Mr. Reed of Staple Inn pos- 
sessed documents which showed that Fielding at this junct- 
ure, probably in anticipation of more lucrative legal duties, 
surrendered the reins to Ralph. The Champion continued 
to exist for some time longer; indeed, it must be regarded 
as long-lived amongst the essayists, since the issue which 
contained its well-known criticism on Garrick is No. 455, 
and appeared late in 1742. But, as far as can be ascer- 
tained, it never again obtained the honours of a reprint. 

Although, after he was called to the Bar, Fielding prac- 
tically relinquished periodical literature, he does not seem 
to have entirely desisted from writing. In Sylvanus Ur- 



68 FIELDING. [chap. 

ban's Register of Books, published during January, 1741, 
is advertised the poem Of True Greatness afterwards in- 
cluded in the Miscellanies; and the same authority an- 
nounces the Vernoniad, an anonymous burlesque Epic 
prompted by Admiral Vernon's popular expedition against 
Porto Bello in 1739, "with six Ships only." That Field- 
ing was the author of the latter is sufficiently proved by 
his order to Mr. Nourse (printed in Roscoe's edition), to 
deliver fifty copies to Mr. Chappel. Another sixpenny 
pamphlet, entitled The Opposition, a Vision, issued in De- 
cember of the same year, is enumerated by him, in the 
Preface to the Miscellanies, amongst the few works he 
published "since the End of June, 1741;" and, provided 
it can be placed before this date, he may be credited with 
a political sermon called the Crisis (1741), which is as- 
cribed to him upon the authority of a writer in Nichols's 
Anecdotes. He may also, before " the End of June, 1741," 
have written other things ; but it is clear from his Caveat 
in the above-mentioned "Preface," together with his com- 
plaint that "he had been very unjustly censured, as well 
on account of what he had not writ, as for what he had," 
that much more has been laid to his charge than he ever 
deserved. Amongst ascriptions of this kind may be men- 
tioned the curious Apology for the Life of Mr. The 1 Gib- 
ber, Comedian, 1740, which is described on its title-page 
as a proper sequel to the autobiography of the Laureate, 
in whose "style and manner" it is said to be written. 
But, although this performance is evidently the work of 
some one well acquainted with the dramatic annals of the 
day, it is more than doubtful whether Fielding had any 
hand or part in it. Indeed, his own statement that " he 
never was, nor would be the Author of anonymous Scan- 
dal [the italics are ours] on the private History or Family 



m.J "JOSEPH ANDREWS." 69 

of any Person whatever," should be regarded as con- 
clusive. 

During all this time he seems to have been steadily ap- 
plying himself to the practice of his profession, if, indeed, 
that weary hope deferred which forms the usual probation 
of legal preferment can properly be so described. As 
might be anticipated from his Salisbury connections, he 
travelled the Western Circuit : and, according to Hutch- 
ins's Dorset, he assiduously attended the Wiltshire sessions. 
He had many friends amongst his brethren of the Bar. 
His cousin, Henry Gould, who had been called in 1734, 
and who, like his grandfather, ultimately became a Judge, 
was also a member of the Middle Temple; and he was 
familiar with Charles Pratt, afterwards Lord Camden, 
whom he may have known at Eton, but whom he certain- 
ly knew in his barrister days. It is probable, too, that he 
was acquainted with Lord Northington, then Robert Hen- 
ley, whose name appears as a subscriber to the Miscella- 
nies, and who was once supposed to contend with Kettleby 
(another subscriber) for the honour of being the original of 
the drunken barrister in Hogarth's Midnight Modern Con- 
versation, a picture which no doubt accurately represents a 
good many of the festivals by which Henry Fielding re- 
lieved the tedium of composing those MS. folio volumes 
on Crown or Criminal Law, which, after his death, revert- 
ed to his half-brother, Sir John. But towards the close of 
1741 he was engaged upon another work which has out- 
weighed all his most laborious forensic efforts, and which 
will long remain an English classic. This was The His- 
tory of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews, and of his 
Friend Mr. Abraham Adams, published by Andrew Millar 
in February, 1742. 

In the same number, and on the same page of the 



70 FIELDING. [chap. 

Gentleman's Magazine which contains the advertisement 
of the Vernoniad, there is a reference to a famous novel 
which had appeared in November, 1740, two months 
earlier, and had already attained an extraordinary pop- 
ularity. " Several Encomiums (says Mr. Urban) on a 
Series of Familiar Letters, publish'd but last month, en- 
titled Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded, came too late for 
this Magazine, and we believe there will be little Occa- 
sion for inserting them in our next; because a Second 
Edition will then come out to supply the Demands in 
the Country, it being judged in town as great a Sign of 
Want of Curiosity not to have read Pamela, as not to 
have seen the French and Italian Dancers." A second 
edition was in fact published in the following month 
(February), to be speedily succeeded by a third in March 
and a fourth in May. Dr. Sherlock (oddly misprinted 
by Mrs. Barbauld as "Dr. Slocock") extolled it from the 
pulpit ; and the great Mr. Pope was reported to have 
gone farther and declared that it would " do more good 
than many volumes of sermons." Other admirers ranked 
it next to the Bible ; clergymen dedicated theological 
treatises to the author ; and " even at Ranelagh " — says 
Richardson's biographer — " those who remember the pub- 
lication say, that it was usual for ladies to hold up the 
volumes of Pamela to one another, to shew that they 
had got the book that every one was talking of." It is 
perhaps hypercritical to observe that Ranelagh Gardens 
were not opened until eighteen months after Mr. Riving- 
ton's duodecimos first made their appearance ; but it will 
be gathered from the tone of some of the foregoing 
commendations that its morality was a strong point 
with the new candidate for literary fame ; and its vol- 
uminous title-page did indeed proclaim at large that it 



hi.] "JOSEPH ANDREWS." 71 

was "Published in order to cultivate the Principles of 
Virtue and Religion in the Minds of the Youth of Both 
Sexes." Its author, Samuel Richardson, was a middle- 
aged London printer, a vegetarian and water-drinker, a 
worthy, domesticated, fussy, and highly-nervous little man. 
Delighting in female society, and accustomed to act as 
confidant and amanuensis for the young women of his 
acquaintance, it had been suggested to him by some 
bookseller friends that he should prepare a " little volume 
of Letters, in a common style, on such subjects as might 
be of use to those country readers, who were unable to 
indite for themselves." As Hogarth's Conversation Pieces 
grew into his Progresses, so this project seems to have de- 
veloped into Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded. The necessity 
for some connecting link between the letters suggested a 
story, and the story chosen was founded upon the actual 
experiences of a young servant girl, who, after victoriously 
resisting all the attempts made by her master to seduce 
her, ultimately obliged him to marry her. It is needless 
to give any account here of the minute and deliberate 
way in which Richardson filled in his outline. As one 
of his critics, D'Alembert, has unanswerably said — " La 
nature est bonne a imiter, mais non pas jusqu'a V ennui " 
— and the author of Pamela has plainly disregarded this 
useful law. On the other hand, the tedium and elabora- 
tion of his style have tended, in these less leisurely days, 
to condemn his work to a neglect which it does not de- 
serve. Few writers — it is a truism to say so — have ex- 
celled him in minute analysis of motive, and knowledge 
of the human heart. About the final morality of his 
heroine's long-drawn defence of her chastity it may, 
however, be permitted to doubt; and, in contrasting the 
book with Fielding's work, it should not be forgotten 



72 FIELDING. [chap. 

that, irreproachable though it seemed to the author's ad- 
mirers, good Dr. Watts complained (and with reason) of 
the indelicacy of some of the scenes. 

But, for the moment, we are more concerned with the 
effect which Pamela produced upon Henry Fielding, 
struggling with the " eternal want of pence, which vexes 
public men," and vaguely hoping for some profitable open- 
ing for powers which had not yet been satisfactorily ex- 
ercised. To his robust and masculine genius, never very 
delicately sensitive where the relations of the sexes are 
concerned, the strange conjunction of purity and precau- 
tion in Richardson's heroine was a thing unnatural, and 
a theme for inextinguishable Homeric laughter. That 
Pamela, through all her trials, could really have cherish- 
ed any affection for her unscrupulous admirer would seem 
to him a sentimental absurdity, and the unprecedented 
success of the book would sharpen his sense of its assaila- 
ble side. Possibly, too, his acquaintance with Richardson, 
whom he knew personally, but with whom he could have 
had no kind of sympathy, disposed him against his work. 
In any case, the idea presently occurred to Fielding of de- 
picting a young man in circumstances of similar impor- 
tunity at the hands of a dissolute woman of fashion. He 
took for his hero Pamela's brother, and by a malicious 
stroke of the pen turned the Mr. B. of Pamela into Squire 
Booby. But the process of invention rapidly carried him 
into paths far beyond the mere parody of Richardson, and 
it is only in the first portion of the book that he really re- 
members his intention. After Chapter X. the story follows 
its natural course, and there is little or nothing of Lady 
Booby, or her frustrate amours. Indeed, the author does 
not even pretend to preserve congruity as regards his hero, 
for, in Chapter V., he makes him tell his mistress that he 



in.] "JOSEPH ANDREWS." 73 

has never been in love, while in Chapter XL we are inform- 
ed that he had long been attached to the charming Fanny 
Moreover, in the intervening letters which Joseph writes to 
his sister Pamela, he makes no reference to this long-exist- 
ent attachment, with which, one would think, she must have 
been perfectly familiar. These discrepancies all point, not 
so much to negligence on the part of the author, as to 
an unconscious transformation of his plan. He no doubt 
speedily found that mere ridicule of Richardson was insuf- 
ficient to sustain the interest of any serious effort, and, be- 
sides, must have been secretly conscious that the " Pamela" 
characteristics of his hero were artistically irreconcilable 
with the personal bravery and cudgel-playing attributes 
with which he had endowed him. Add to this that the im- 
mortal Mrs. Slipslop and Parson Adams — the latter especial- 
ly — had begun to acquire an importance with their creator 
for which the initial scheme had by no means provided; 
and he finally seems to have disregarded his design, only 
returning to it in his last chapters in order to close his work 
with some appearance of consistency. The History of Jo- 
seph Andrews, it has been said, might well have dispensed 
with Lady Booby altogether, and yet, without her, not only 
this book, but Tom Jones and Amelia also, would probably 
have been lost to us. The accident which prompted three 
such masterpieces cannot be honestly regretted. 

It was not without reason that Fielding added promi- 
nently to his title-page the name of Mr. Abraham Adams. 
If he is not the real hero of the book, he is undoubtedly 
the character whose fortunes the reader follows with the 
closest interest. Whether he is smoking his black and con- 
solatory pipe in the gallery of the inn, or losing his way 
whilst he dreams over a passage of Greek, or groaning over 
the fatuities of the man-of-fashion in Leonora's story, or 
4 



74 FIELDING. [chap. 

brandishing his famous crabstick in defence of Fanny, he 
is always the same delightful mixture of benevolence and 
simplicity, of pedantry and credulity and ignorance of the 
world. He is " compact," to use Shakspeare's word, of 
the oddest contradictions, the most diverting eccentrici- 
ties. He has Aristotle's Politics at his ringers' ends, but he 
knows nothing of the daily Gazetteers ; he is perfectly fa- 
miliar with the Pillars of Hercules, but he has never even 
heard of the Levant. He travels to London to sell a col- 
lection of sermons which he has forgotten to carry with 
him, and in a moment of excitement he tosses into the fire 
the copy of ^Eschylus which it has cost him years to tran- 
scribe. He gives irreproachable advice to Joseph on for- 
titude and resignation, but he is overwhelmed with grief 
when his child is reported to be drowned. When he speaks 
upon faith and works, on marriage, on school discipline, he 
is weighty and sensible ; but he falls an easy victim to the 
plausible professions of every rogue he meets, and is willing 
to believe in the principles of Mr. Peter Pounce, or the hu- 
manity of Parson Trulliber. Not all the discipline of hog's 
blood and cudgels and cold water to which he is subjected 
can deprive him of his native dignity ; and as he stands 
before us in the short great-coat under which his ragged 
cassock is continually making its appearance, with his old 
wig and battered hat, a clergyman whose social position is 
scarcely above that of a footman, and who supports a wife 
and six children upon a cure of twenty-three pounds a year, 
which his outspoken honesty is continually jeopardising, 
he is a far finer figure than Pamela in her coach-and-six, or 
Bellarmine in his cinnamon velvet. If not, as Mr. Law- 
rence says, with exaggerated enthusiasm, " the grandest de- 
lineation of the pattern-priest which the world has yet 
seen," he is assuredly a noble example of primitive good- 



in.] "JOSEPH ANDREWS." 75 

ness and practical Christianity. It is certain — as Mr. Fors- 
ter and Mr. Keightley have pointed out — that Goldsmith 
borrowed some of his characteristics for Dr. Primrose, and 
it has been suggested that Sterne remembered him in more 
than one page of Tristram Shandy. 

Next to Parson Adams, perhaps the best character in 
Joseph Andrews — though of an entirely different type — is 
Lady Booby's " Waiting-Gentlewoman," the excellent Mrs. 
Slipslop. Her sensitive dignity, her easy changes from ser- 
vility to insolence, her sensuality, her inimitably distorted 
vocabulary, which Sheridan borrowed for Mrs. Malaprop, 
and Dickens modified for Mrs. Gamp, are all peculiarities 
which make up a personification of the richest humour and 
the most life-like reality. Mr. Peter Pounce, too, with his 
" scoundrel maxims, 1 ' as disclosed in that remarkable dia- 
logue which is said to be " better worth reading than all 
the Works of Colley Gibber" and in which charity is de- 
fined as consisting rather in a disposition to relieve distress 
than in an actual act of relief; Parson Trulliber with his 
hogs, his greediness, and his willingness to prove his Chris- 
tianity by fisticuffs ; shrewish Mrs. Tow-wouse with her 
scold's tongue, and her erring but perfectly subjugated hus- 
band — these again are portraits finished with admirable 
spirit and fidelity. Andrews himself, and his blushing 
sweetheart, do not lend themselves so readily to humorous 
art. Nevertheless the former, when freed from the wiles 
of Lady Booby, is by no means a despicable hero, and Fan- 
ny is a sufficiently fresh and blooming heroine. The char- 
acters of Pamela and Mr. Booby are fairly preserved from 
the pages of their original inventor. But when Fielding 
makes Parson Adams rebuke the pair for laughing in 
church at Joseph's wedding, and puts into the lady's 
mouth a sententious little speech upon her altered position 



56 FIELDING. [chap. 

in life, lie is adding some ironical touches which Richard- 
son would certainly have omitted. 

No selection of personages, however, even of the most 
detailed and particular description, can convey any real 
impression of the mingled irony and insight, the wit and 
satire, the genial but perfectly remorseless revelation of 
human springs of action, which distinguish scene after 
scene of the book. Nothing, for example, can be more 
admirable than the different manifestations of meanness 
which take place amongst the travellers of the stage-coach, 
in the oft-quoted chapter where Joseph, having been rob- 
bed of everything, lies naked and bleeding in the ditch. 
There is Miss Grave-airs, who protests against the inde- 
cency of his entering the vehicle, but, like a certain lady 
in the Rake's Progress, holds the sticks of her fan before 
her face while he does so, and who is afterwards found 
to be carrying Nantes under the guise of Hungary-water; 
there is the lawyer, who. advises that the wounded man 
shall be taken in, not from any humane motive, but be- 
cause he is afraid of being involved in legal proceedings 
if they leave him to his fate ; there is the wit, who seizes 
the occasion for a burst of facetious double - entendres, 
chiefly designed for the discomfiture of the prude ; and, 
lastly, there is the coachman, whose only concern is the 
shilling for his fare, and who refuses to lend either of the 
useless greatcoats he is sitting upon, lest " they should be 
made bloody," leaving the shivering suppliant to be clothed 
by the generosity of the postilion (" a Lad," says Fielding, 
with a fine touch of satire, " who hath been since trans- 
ported for robbing a Hen-roost"). This worthy fellow 
accordingly strips off his only outer garment, "at the 
same time swearing a great Oath," for which he is duly 
vebuked by the passengers, " that lie would rather ride in 



m.] "JOSEPH ANDREWS." 11 

his Shirt all his Life, than suffer a Fellow-Creature to lie 
in so miserable a Condition." Then there are the admi- 
rable scenes which succeed Joseph's admission into the 
inn ; the discussion between the bookseller and the two 
parsons as to the publication of Adams's sermons, which 
the " Clergy would be certain to cry down," because they 
inculcate good works against faith ; the debate before the 
justice as to the manuscript of JEschylus, which is mis- 
taken for one of the Fathers ; and the pleasant discourse 
between the poet and the player which, beginning by com- 
pliments, bids fair to end in blows. Nor are the stories 
of Leonora and Mr. Wilson without their interest. They 
interrupt the straggling narrative far less than the Man of 
the Hill interrupts Tom Jones, and they afford an oppor- 
tunity for varying the epic of the highway by pictures 
of polite society which could not otherwise be introduced. 
There can be little doubt, too, that some of Mr. Wilson's 
town experiences were the reflection of the author's own 
career; while the characteristics of Leonora's lover Ho- 
ratio — who was "a young Gentleman of a good Family, 
bred to the Law," and recently called to the Bar, whose 
" Face and Person were such as the Generality allowed 
handsome : but he had a Dignity in his Air very rarely 
to be seen," and who " had Wit and Humour, with an In- 
clination to Satire, which he indulged rather too much" — 
read almost like a complimentary description of Fielding 
himself. 

Like Hogarth, in that famous drinking scene to which 
reference has already been made, Fielding was careful to 
disclaim arry personal portraiture in Joseph Andrews. In 
the opening chapter of Book III. he declares " once for all 
that he describes not Men, but Manners ; not an Individ- 
ual, but a Species," although he admits that his characters 



78 FIELDING. [chap. 

are "taken from Life." In his "Preface" he reiterates 
this profession, adding that, in copying from nature, he 
has "used the utmost Care to obscure the Persons by 
such different Circumstances, Degrees, and Colours, that it 
will be impossible to guess at them with any degree of 
certainty." Nevertheless — as in Hogarth's case — neither 
his protests nor his skill have prevented some of those 
identifications which are so seductive to the curious ; and 
it is generally believed — indeed, it was expressly stated 
by Richardson and others — that the prototype of Parson 
Adams was a friend of Fielding, the Reverend William 
Young. Like Adams, he was a scholar and devoted to 
^Eschylus ; he resembled him, too, in his trick of snapping 
his fingers, and his habitual absence of mind. Of this 
latter peculiarity it is related that on one occasion, when 
a chaplain in Marlborough's wars, he strolled abstractedly 
into the enemy's lines with his beloved JEschylus in his 
hand. His peaceable intentions were so unmistakable that 
he was instantly released, and politely directed to his regi- 
ment. Once, too, it is said, on being charged by a gentle- 
man with sitting for the portrait of Adams, he offered 
to knock the speaker down, thereby supplying additional 
proof of the truth of the allegation. He died in August, 
1757, and is buried in the Chapel of Chelsea Hospital. 
The obituary notice in the Gentleman's Magazine de- 
scribes him as " late of Gillingham, Dorsetshire," which 
would make him a neighbour of the novelist. 1 Another 
tradition connects Mr. Peter Pounce with the scrivener 
and usurer Peter Walter, whom Pope had satirised, and 
whom Hogarth is thought to have introduced into Plate I. 
of Marriage a-la-Mode. His sister lived at Salisbury ; and 

1 Lord Thurlow was accustomed to find a later likeness to Field- 
ing's hero in his protege, the poet Crabbe. 



in.] "JOSEPH ANDREWS." 79 

he himself had an estate at Stalbridge Park, which was 
close to East Stour. From references to Walter in the 
Champion for May 31, 1740, as well as in the Essay on 
Conversation, it is clear that Fielding knew him personal- 
ly, and disliked him. He may, indeed, have been amongst 
those county magnates whose criticism was so objectiona- 
ble to Captain Booth during his brief residence in Dorset- 
shire. Parson Trulliber, also, according to Murphy, was 
Fielding's first tutor — Mr. Oliver of Motcombe. But his 
widow denied the resemblance ; and it is hard to believe 
that this portrait is not overcharged. In all these cases, 
however, there is no reason for supposing that Fielding 
may not have thoroughly believed in the sincerity of his 
attempts to avoid the exact reproduction of actual per- 
sons, although, rightly or wrongly, his presentments were 
speedily identified. With ordinary people it is by salient 
characteristics that a likeness is established ; and no varia- 
tion of detail, however skilful, greatly affects this result. 
In our own days we have seen that, in spite of both au- 
thors, the public declined to believe that the Harold Skim- 
pole of Charles Dickens, and George Eliot's Dinah Morris, 
were not perfectly recognisable copies of living originals. 

Upon its title-page Joseph Andrews is declared to be 
" written in Imitation of the Manner of Cervantes," and 
there is no doubt that, in addition to being subjected to 
an unreasonable amount of ill-usage, Parson Adams has 
manifest affinities with Don Quixote. Scott, however, 
seems to have thought that Scarron's Roman Comique was 
the real model, so far as mock-heroic was concerned ; but 
he must have forgotten that Fielding was already the au- 
thor of Tom Thumb, and that Swift had written the Bat- 
tle of the Books. Resemblances — not of much moment — 
have also been traced to the Paysan Parvenu and the His- 



80 FIELDING. [chap. 

toire de Marianne of Marivaux. With both these books 
Fielding was familiar ; in fact, he expressly mentions them, 
as well as the Roman Comique, in the course of his story, 
and they doubtless exercised more or less influence upon 
his plan. But in the Preface, from which we have already 
quoted, he describes that plan ; and this, because it is 
something definite, is more interesting than any specula- 
tion as to his determining models. After marking the 
division of the Epic, like the Drama, into Tragedy and 
Comedy, he points out that it may exist in prose as well 
as verse, and he proceeds to explain that what he has at- 
tempted in Joseph Andrews is "a comic Epic-Poem in 
Prose," differing from serious romance in its substitution 
of a "light and ridiculous" fable for a "grave and solemn" 
one, of inferior characters for those of superior rank, and 
of ludicrous for sublime sentiments. Sometimes in the 
diction he has admitted burlesque, but never in the senti- 
ments and characters, where, he contends, it would be out 
of place. He further defines the only source of the ridic- 
ulous to be affectation, of which the chief causes are vanity 
and hypocrisy. Whether this scheme was an after-thought 
it is difficult to say ; but it is certainly necessary to a 
proper understanding of the author's method — a method 
which was to find so many imitators. Another passage in 
the Preface is worthy of remark. With reference to the 
pictures of vice which the book contains, he observes: 
" First, That it is very difficult to pursue a Series of human 
Actions, and keep clear from them. Secondly, That the 
Vices to be found here [i. e., Joseph Andrews] are rather 
the accidental Consequences of some human Frailty, or 
Foible, than Causes habitually existing in the Mind. Third- 
ly, That they are never set forth as the Objects of Ridi- 
cule but Detestation. Fourthly, That they are never the 



in.] "JOSEPH ANDREWS." 81 

principal Figure at the Time on the Scene ; and, lastly, 
they never produce the intended Evil.' 1 In reading some 
pages of Fielding it is not always easy to see that he has 
strictly adhered to these principles ; but it is well to recall 
them occasionally, as constituting at all events the code 
that he desired to follow. 

Although the popularity of Fielding's first novel was 
considerable, it did not, to judge by the number of edi- 
tions, at once equal the popularity of the book by which 
it was suggested. Pamela, as we have seen, speedily ran 
through four editions; but it was six months before Millar 
published the second and revised edition of Joseph An- 
drews; and the third did not appear until more than a 
year after the date of first publication. With Richardson, 
as might be expected, it was never popular at all, and to a 
great extent it is possible to sympathize with his annoy- 
ance. The daughter of his brain, whom he had piloted 
through so many troubles, had grown to him more real 
than the daughters of his body, and to see her at the 
height of her fame made contemptible by what in one of 
his letters he terms " a lewd and ungenerous engraftment," 
must have been a sore trial to his absorbed and self-con- 
scious nature, and one which not all the consolations of 
his consistory of feminine flatterers — " my ladies," as the 
little man called them — could wholly alleviate. But it 
must be admitted that his subsequent attitude was neither 
judicious nor dignified. He pursued Fielding henceforth 
with steady depreciation, caught eagerly at any scandal 
respecting him, professed himself unable to perceive his 
genius, deplored his " lowness," and comforted himself by 
reflecting that, if he pleased at all, it was because he had 
learned the art from Pamela. Of Fielding's other contem- 
porary critics, one only need be mentioned here, more on 
4* 



82 FIELDING. [chap. 

account of his literary eminence than of the special felicity 
of his judgment. " I have myself," writes Gray to West, 
" upon your recommendation, been reading Joseph An- 
drews. The incidents are ill laid and without invention ; 
but the characters have a great deal of nature, which al- 
ways pleases even in her lowest shapes. Parson Adams 
is perfectly well ; so is Mrs. Slipslop, and the story of 
Wilson ; and throughout he [the author] shews himself 
well read in Stage - Coaches, Country Squires, Inns, and 
Inns of Court. His reflections upon high people and low 
people, and misses and masters, are very good. However 
the exaltedness of some minds (or rather as I shrewdly 
suspect their insipidity and want of feeling or observation) 
may make them insensible to these light things, (I mean 
such as characterise and paint nature) yet surely they are 
as weighty and much more useful than your grave dis- 
courses upon the mind, the passions, and what not." And 
thereupon follows that fantastic utterance concerning the 
romances of MM. Marivaux and Crebillon Jils, which has 
disconcerted so many of Gray's admirers. We suspect 
that any reader who should nowadays contrast the sickly 
and sordid intrigue of the Paysan Parvenu with the 
healthy animalism of Joseph Andrews would greatly pre- 
fer the latter. Yet Gray's verdict, though cold, is not un- 
discriminating, and is perhaps as much as one could ex- 
pect from his cloistered and fastidious taste. 

Various anecdotes, all more or less apocryphal, have 
been related respecting the first appearance of Joseph An- 
drews, and the sum paid to the author for the copyright. 
A reference to the original assignment, now in the Forster 
Library at South Kensington, definitely- settles the latter 
point. The amount in " lawful Money of Great Britain," 
received by " Henry Fielding, Esq.," from " Andrew Millar 



in.] "JOSEPH ANDREWS." 83 

of St. Clement's Danes in the Strand," was £183 lis. In 
this document, as in the order to Nourse of which a fac- 
simile is given by Roscoe, both the author's name and sig- 
nature are written with the old-fashioned double f, and he 
calls himself " Fielding " and not " Feilding," like the rest 
of the Denbigh family. If we may trust an anecdote given 
by Kippis, Lord Denbigh once asked his kinsman the rea- 
son of this difference. " I cannot tell, my lord." returned 
the novelist, " unless it be that my branch of the family 
was the first that learned to spell." 



CHAPTER IV. 



In March, 1742, according to an article in the Gentleman's 
Magazine, attributed to Samuel Johnson, " the most popu- 
lar Topic of Conversation " was the Account of the Con- 
duct of the Dowager Dutchess of Marlborough, from her 
First Coming to Court, to the Year 17 10, which, with the 
help of Hooke of the Roman History, the " terrible old 
Sarah" had just put forth. Amongst the little cloud of 
Sarah- Ads and Old Wives' Tales evoked by this produc- 
tion, was a Vindication of her Grace by Fielding, specially 
prompted, as appears from the title-page, by the " late 
scurrilous Pamphlet" of a "noble Author." If this were 
not acknowledged to be from Fielding's pen in the Pref- 
ace to the Miscellanies (in which collection, however, it is 
not reprinted), its authorship would be sufficiently proved 
by its being included with Miss Lucy in Town in the as- 
signment to Andrew Millar referred to at the close of the 
preceding chapter. The price Millar paid for it was £5 
5s., or exactly half that of the farce. But it is only rea- 
sonable to assume that the Duchess herself (who is said to 
have given Hooke £5000 for his help) also rewarded her 
champion. Whether Fielding's admiration for the "glo- 
rious Woman " in whose cause he had drawn his pen was 
genuine, or whether — to use Johnson's convenient euphem- 



chap, iv.] THE "MISCELLANIES." 85 

ism concerning Hooke — " he was acting only ministerial- 
ly," are matters for speculation. His father, however, had 
served under the Duke, and there may have been a tradi- 
tional attachment to the Churchills on the part of his 
family. It has even been ingeniously suggested that Sarah 
Fielding was her Grace's god-child ;' but as her mother's 
name was also Sarah, no importance can be attached to 
the suggestion. 

Miss Lucy in Town, as its sub-title explains, was a sequel 
to the Virgin Unmask" 1 d, and was produced at Drury Lane 
in May, 1742. As already stated in Chapter II., Fielding's 
part in it was small. It is a lively but not very creditable 
trifle, which turns upon certain equivocal London experi- 
ences of the Miss Lucy of the earlier piece ; and it seems 
to have been chiefly intended to afford an opportunity for 
some clever imitation of the reigning Italian singers by 
Mrs. Clive and the famous tenor Beard. Horace Walpole, 
who refers to it in a letter to Mann, between an account 
of the opening of Ranelagh and an anecdote of Mrs. 
Bracegirdle, calls it "a little simple farce," and says that 
" Mrs. Clive mimics the Muscovita admirably, and Beard 
Amorevoli tolerably." Mr. Walpole detested the Mus- 
covita, and adored Amorevoli, which perhaps accounts for 
the nice discrimination shown in his praise. One of the 
other characters, Mr. Zorobabel, a Jew, was taken by Mack- 
lin, and from another, Mrs. Haycock (afterwards changed 
to Mrs. Midnight), Foote is supposed to have borrowed 
Mother Cole in The Minor. A third character, Lord Baw- 
ble, was considered to reflect upon "a particular person of 
quality," and the piece was speedily forbidden by the Lord 
Chamberlain, although it appears to have been acted a few 

1 Memoirs of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, etc., by Mrs. A. T. 
Thomson, 1839. 



86 FIELDING. [chap. 

months later without opposition. One of the results of 
the prohibition, according to Mr. Lawrence, was a Letter to 
a Noble Lord (the Lord Chamberlain) . . . occasioned by 
a Representation . . . of a Farce called " Miss Lucy in 
Town." This, in spite of the Caveat in the Preface to 
the Miscellanies, he ascribes to Fielding, and styles it " a 
sharp expostulation ... in which he [Fielding] disavowed 
any idea of a personal attack." But Mr. Lawrence must 
plainly have been misinformed on the subject, for the 
pamphlet bears little sign of Fielding's hand. As far as 
it is intelligible, it is rather against Miss Lucy than for 
her, and it makes no reference to Lord Bawble's original. 
The name of this injured patrician seems indeed never to 
have transpired; but he could scarcely have been in any 
sense a phenomenal member of the Georgian aristocracy. 

In the same month that Miss Lucy in Town appeared 
at Drury Lane, Millar published it in book form. In the 
following June, T. Waller of the Temple-Cloisters issued 
the first of a contemplated series of translations from Aris- 
tophanes by Henry Fielding, Esq., and the Rev. William 
Young who sat for Parson Adams. The play chosen was 
Plutus, the God of Riches, and a notice upon the original 
cover stated that, according to the reception it met with 
from the public, it would be followed by the others. It 
must be presumed that "the distressed, and at present, 
declining State of Learning" to which the authors referred 
in their dedication to Lord Talbot, was not a mere form of 
speech, for the enterprise does not seem to have met with 
sufficient encouragement to justify its continuance, and 
this special rendering has long since been supplanted by 
the more modern versions of Mitchell, Frere, and others. 
Whether Fielding took any large share in it is not now 
discernible. It is most likely, however, that the bulk of 



iv.] THE "MISCELLANIES." 87 

the work was Young's, and that his colleague did little 
more than furnish the Preface, which is partly written in 
the first person, and betrays its origin by a sudden and 
not very relevant attack upon the " pretty, dapper, brisk, 
smart, pert Dialogue" of Modern Comedy into which the 
"infinite Wit" of Wycherley had degenerated under Cib- 
ber. It also contains a compliment to the numbers of the 
" inimitable Author " of the Essay on Man. 

This is the second compliment which Fielding had paid 
to Pope within a brief period, the first having been that 
in the Champion respecting the translation of the Iliad. 
What his exact relations with the author of the Dunciad 
were has never been divulged. At first they seem to have 
.been rather hostile than friendly. Fielding had ridiculed 
the Romish Church in the Old Debauchees, a course which 
Pope could scarcely have approved ; and he was, more- 
over, the cousin of Lady Mary, now no longer throned in 
the Twickenham Temple. Pope had commented upon a 
passage in Tom Thumb, and Fielding had indirectly refer- 
red to Pope in the Covent Garden Tragedy. When it 
had been reported that Pope had gone to see Pasquin, 
the statement had been at once contradicted. But Field- 
ing was now, like Pope, against Walpole ; and Joseph An- 
drews had been published. It may therefore be that the 
compliments in Plutus and the Champion were the result 
of some rapprochement between the two. It is, neverthe- 
less, curious that, at this very time, an attempt appears to 
have been made to connect the novelist with the contro- 
versy which presently rose out of Cibber's well-known let- 
ter to Pope. In August, 1742, the month following its 
publication, among the pamphlets to which it gave rise, 
was announced The Cudgel; or, a Crab-tree Lecture. To 
the Author of the Dunciad. "By Hercules Vinegar, 



88 FIELDING. [chap. 

Esq." fhis very mediocre satire in verse is still to be 
found at the British Museum; but even if it were not 
included in Fielding's general disclaimer as to unsigned 
work, it would be difficult to connect it with him. To 
give but one reason, it would make him the ally and ad- 
herent of Cibber — which is absurd. In all probability, like 
another Grub Street squib under the same pseudonym, it 
was by Ralph, who had already attacked Pope, and con- 
tinued to maintain the Captain's character in the Cham- 
pion long after Fielding had ceased to write for it. It is 
even possible that Ralph had some share in originating the 
Vinegar family, for it is noticeable that the paper in which 
they are first introduced bears no initials. In this case 
he would consider himself free to adopt the name, how-, 
ever disadvantageous that course might be to Fielding's 
reputation. And it is clear that, whatever their relations 
had been in the past, they were for the time on opposite 
sides in politics, since while Fielding had been vindicat- 
ing the Duchess of Marlborough, Ralph had been writing 
against her. 

These, however, are minor questions, the discussion of 
which would lead too far from the main narrative of 
Fielding's life. In the same letter in which Walpole had 
referred to Miss Lucy in Town, he had spoken of the 
success of a new player at Goodman's Fields, after whom 
all the town, in Gray's phrase, was " horn-mad ;" but in 
whose acting Mr. Walpole, with a critical distrust of nov- 
elty, saw nothing particularly wonderful. This was David 
Garrick. He had been admitted a student of Lincoln's 
Inn a year before Fielding entered the Middle Temple, had 
afterwards turned wine-merchant, and was now delighting 
London by his versatility in comedy, tragedy, and farce. 
One of his earliest theatrical exploits, according to Sir 



it.] THE "MISCELLANIES." 89 

John Hawkins, had been a private representation of Field- 
ing's Mock-Doctor, in a room over the St. John's Gate, 
Clerkenwell, so long familiar to subscribers of the Gentle- 
man's Magazine ; his fellow-actors being Cave's journey- 
men printers, and his audience Cave, Johnson, and a few 
friends. After this he appears to have made the acquaint- 
ance of Fielding; and, late in 1742, applied to him to 
know if he had " any Play by him," as " he was desirous 
of appearing in a new Part." As a matter of fact Field- 
ing had two plays by him — the Good-natured Man (a title 
subsequently used by Goldsmith), and a piece called The 
Wedding Day. The former was almost finished ; the lat- 
ter was an early work, being indeed "the third Dramatic 
Performance he ever attempted." The necessary arrange- 
ments having been made with Mr. Fleetwood, the mana- 
ger of Drury Lane, Fielding set to work to complete the 
Good-natured Mem, which he considered the better of the 
two. When he had done so, he came to the conclusion 
that it required more attention than he could give it ; and, 
moreover, that the part allotted to Garrick, although it sat- 
isfied the actor, was scarcely important enough. He ac- 
cordingly reverted to the Wedding Day, the central char- 
acter of which had been intended for Wilks. It had many 
faults, which none saw more clearly than the author him- 
self, but he hoped that Garrick's energy and prestige would 
triumphantly surmount all obstacles. He hoped, as well, 
to improve it by revision. The dangerous illness of his 
wife, however, made it impossible for him to execute his 
task ; and, as he was pressed for money, the Wedding 
Day was produced on the 17th of February, 1743, appar- 
ently much as it had been first written some dozen years 
before. As might be anticipated, it was not a success. 
The character of Millamour is one which it is hard to be- 



90 FIELDING. [chap. 

lieve that even Garrick could have made attractive, and 
though others of the parts were entrusted to Mrs. Wof- 
fington, Mrs. Pritchard, and Macklin, it was acted but six 
nights. The author's gains were under £50. In the 
Preface to the Miscellanies, from which most of the fore- 
going account is taken, Fielding, as usual, refers its failure 
to other causes than its inherent defects. Rumours, he 
says, had been circulated as to its indecency (and in truth 
some of the scenes are more than hazardous) ; but it had 
passed the licenser, and must be supposed to have been up 
to the moral standard of the time. Its unfavourable re- 
ception, as Fielding must have known in his heart, was 
due to its artistic shortcomings, and also to the fact that a 
change was taking place in the public taste. It is in con- 
nection with the Wedding Day that one of the best-known 
anecdotes of the author is related. Garrick had begged 
him to retrench a certain objectionable passage. This 
Fielding, either from indolence or unwillingness, declined 
to do, asserting that if it was not good, the audience might 
find it out. The passage was promptly hissed, and Gar- 
rick returned to the green-room, where the author was 
solacing himself with a bottle of champagne. " What ie\ 
the matter, Garrick ?" said he to the flustered actor ; " whal 
are they hissing now V ' He was informed with some heat 
that they had been hissing the very scene he had been 
asked to withdraw, "and," added Garrick, " they have so 
frightened me, that I shall not be able to collect myself 
again the whole night." — "Oh!" answered the author, 
with an oath, " they have found it out, have they ?" This 
rejoinder is usually quoted as an instance of Fielding's 
contempt for the intelligence of his audience; but nine 
men in ten, it may be observed, would have said some- 
thing of the same sort. 



iv.] THE "MISCELLANIES." 91 

The only other thing which need be referred to in con- 
nection with this comedy — the last of his own dramatic 
works which Fielding ever witnessed upon the stage — is 
Macklin's doggerel Prologue. Mr. Lawrence attributes this 
to Fielding ; but he seems to have overlooked the fact that 
in the Miscellanies it is headed, " Writ and Spoken by 
Mr. Macklin," which gives it more interest as the work of 
an outsider than if it had been a mere laugh by the author 
at himself. Garrick is represented as too busy to speak 
the prologue ; and Fielding, who has been " drinking to 
raise his Spirits," has begged Macklin, with his " long, dis- 
mal, Mercy-begging Face," to go on and apologise. Mack- 
lin then pretends to recognise him among the audience, 
and pokes fun at his anxieties, telling him that he had 
better have stuck to "honest Abram Adams," who, "in 
spight of Critics, can make his Readers laugh." The 
words "in spite of critics" indicate another distinction 
between Fielding's novels and plays, which should have 
its weight in any comparison of them. The censors of 
the pit, in the eighteenth century, seem to have exercised 
an unusual influence in deciding whether a play should 
succeed or not ;* and, from Fielding's frequent references 
to friends and enemies, it would almost seem as if he be- 
lieved their suffrages to be more important than a good 
plot and a witty dialogue. On the other hand, no coterie 
of Wits and Templars could kill a book like Joseph An- 
drews. To say nothing of the opportunities afforded by 
the novel for more leisurely character-drawing, and greater 
by-play of reflection and description, its reader was an 
isolated and independent judge ; and in the long run the 

1 Miller's Coffee-Home, 173*7, for example, was damned by the Tem- 
plars because it was supposed to reflect on the keepers of " Dick's." 
— Biog. Dramatica. 



92 FIELDING. [chap. 

difference told wonderfully in favour of the author. Mack- 
lin was obviously right in recommending Fielding, even in 
jest, to stick to Parson Adams, and from the familiar pub- 
licity of the advice it may also be inferred, not only that 
the opinion was one commonly current, but that the novel 
was unusually popular. 

The Wedding Day was issued separately in February, 
1743. It must therefore be assumed that the three vol- 
umes of Miscellanies, by Henry Fielding, Esq., in which it 
was reprinted, and to which reference has so often been 
made in these pages, did not appear until later. 1 They 
were published by subscription ; and the list, in addition 
to a large number of aristocratic and legal names, contains 
some of more permanent interest. Side by side with the 
Chesterfields and Marlboroughs and Burlingtons and Den- 
bighs, come William Pitt and Henry Fox, Esqs., with Dod- 
ington and Winnington and Hanbury Williams. The 
theatrical world is well represented by Garrick and Mrs. 
Woffington and Mrs. Clive. Literature has no names of 
any eminence except that of Young; for Savage and 
Whitehead, Mallet and Benjamin Hoadly, are certainly 
ignes minores. Pope is conspicuous for his absence ; so 
also are Horace Walpole and Gray, while Richardson, of 
course, is wanting. Johnson, as yet only the author of 
London, and journeyman to Cave, could scarcely be ex- 
pected in the roll ; and, in any case, his friendship for the 
author of Pamela would probably have kept him away. 
Among some other well-known eighteenth century names 
are those of Dodsley and Millar the booksellers, and the 
famous Vauxhall impresario Jonathan Tyers. 

The first volume of the Miscellanies^ besides a lengthy 

1 By advertisement in the London Daily Post and General Adver- 
tiser, they would seem to have been published early in April, 1743. 



IV.] THE "MISCELLANIES." 93 

Preface, includes the author's poems, essays On Conver- 
sation, On the Knowledge of the Characters of Men, On 
Nothing, a squib upon the Transactions of the Royal So- 
ciety, a translation from Demosthenes, and one or two 
minor pieces. Much of the biographical material con- 
tained in the Preface has already been made use of, as 
well as those verses which can be definitely dated, or 
which relate to the author's love-affairs. The hitherto 
unnoticed portions of the volume consist chiefly of Epis- 
tles, in the orthodox eighteenth century fashion. One — 
already referred to — is headed Of True Greatness ; anoth- 
er, inscribed to the Duke of Richmond, Of Good-nature ; 
while a third is addressed to a friend, On the Choice of a 
Wife. This last contains some sensible lines, but although 
Roscoe has managed to extract two quotable passages, it is 
needless to imitate him here. These productions show no 
trace of the authentic Fielding. The essays are more re- 
markable, although, like Montaigne's, they are scarcely de- 
scribed by their titles. That on Conversation is really a 
little treatise on good-breeding; that on the Character? 
of Men, a lay sermon against Fielding's pet antipathy- 
hypocrisy. Nothing can well be wiser, even now, than* 
some of the counsels in the former of these papers on 
such themes as the limits of raillery, the duties of hos- 
pitality, and the choice of subject in general conversa- 
tion. Nor, however threadbare they may look to-day, can 
the final conclusions be reasonably objected to: "First, 
That every Person who indulges his Ill-nature or Vanity, 
at the Expense of others ; and in introducing Uneasiness, 
Vexation, and Confusion into Society, however exalted or 
high-titled he may be, is thoroughly ill-bred ;" and " Sec- 
ondly, That whoever, from the Goodness of his Disposi- 
tion or Understanding, endeavours to his utmost to culti- 



94 FIELDING. [chap. 

vate the Good-humour and Happiness of others, and to 
contribute to the Ease and Comfort of all his Acquaint- 
ance, however low in Rank Fortune may have placed him, 
or however clumsy he may be in his Figure or Demeanour, 
hath, in the truest sense of the Word, a Claim to Good- 
Breeding." One fancies that this essay must have been a 
favourite with the historian of the Book of Snobs and the 
creator of Major Dobbin. 

The Characters of Men is not equal to the Conversation. 
The theme is a wider one ; and the end proposed — that 
of supplying rules for detecting the real disposition 
through all the social disguises which cloak and envelop 
it — can scarcely be said to be attained. But there are 
happy touches even in this; and when the author says, 
" I will venture to affirm, that I have known some of the 
lest sort of Men in the World (to use the vulgar Phrase,) 
who would not have scrupled cutting a Friend's Throat ; 
and a Fellow whom no Man should be seen to speak to, 
capable of the highest Acts of Friendship and Benevo- 
lence," one recognises the hand that made the sole good 
Samaritan in Joseph Andreivs " a Lad who hath since been 
transported for robbing a Hen-roost." The account of 
the Terrestrial Chrysipus or Guinea, a burlesque on a pa- 
per read before the Royal Society on the Fresh Water 
Polypus, is chiefly interesting from the fact that it is sup- 
posed to be written by Petrus Gualterus (Peter Walter), 
who had an "extraordinary Collection" of them. He 
died, in fact, worth £300,000. The only other paper in 
the volume of any value is a short one, Of the Remedy of 
Affliction for the Loss of our Friends, to which we shall 
presently return. 

The farce of Fury dice, and the Wedding Day, which, 
with A Journey from this World to the Next, etc., make 



iv.] THE "MISCELLANIES." 95 

up the contents of the second volume of the Miscellanies, 
have been already sufficiently discussed. But the Journey 
deserves some further notice. It has been suggested that 
this curious Lucianic production may have been prompted 
by the vision of Mercury and Charon in the Champion, 
though the kind of allegory of which it consists is com- 
mon enough with the elder essayists ; and it is notable 
that another book was published in April, 1743, under 
the title of Cardinal Fleurifs Journey to the other World, 
which is manifestly suggested by Quevedo. Fielding's 
Journey, however, is a fragment which the author feigns 
to have found in the garret of a stationer in the Strand. 
Sixteen out of five-and-twenty chapters in Book I. are oc- 
cupied with the transmigrations of Julian the Apostate, 
which are not concluded. Then follows another chapter 
from Book XIX., which contains the history of Anna 
Boleyn, and the whole breaks off abruptly. Its best por- 
tion is undoubtedly the first ten chapters, which relate the 
writer's progress to Elysium, and afford opportunity for 
many strokes of satire. Such are the whimsical terror of 
the spiritual traveller in the stage-coach, who hears sudden- 
ly that his neighbour has died of small-pox, a disease he 
had been dreading all his life ; and the punishment of 
Lord Scrape, the miser, who is doomed to dole out money 
to all comers, and who, after " being purified in the Body 
of a Hog," is ultimately to return to earth again. Nor is 
the delight of some of those who profit by his enforced 
assistance less keenly realised: "I remarked a poetical 
Spirit in particular, who swore he would have a hearty 
Gripe at him : ; For, says he, the Rascal not only refused to 
subscribe to my Works ; but sent back my Letter unan- 
swered, tho' I'm a better Gentleman than himself.'" The 
descriptions of the City of Diseases, the Palace of Death, 



96 FIELDING. [char 

and the Wheel of Fortune from which men draw their 
chequered lots, are all unrivalled in their way. But here, 
as always, it is in his pictures of human nature that Field- 
ing shines, and it is this that makes the chapters in which 
Minos is shown adjudicating upon the separate claims of 
the claimants to enter Elysium the most piquant of all. 
The virtuoso and butterfly hunter, who is repulsed " with 
great Scorn ;" the dramatic author who is admitted (to 
his disgust), not on account of his works, but because he 
has once lent " the whole Profits of a Benefit Night to a 
Friend ;" the parson who is turned back, while his poor 
parishioners are admitted; and the trembling wretch who 
has been hanged for a robbery of eighteen-pence, to which 
he had been driven by poverty, but whom the judge wel- 
comes cordially because he had been a kind father, hus- 
band, and son ; all these are conceived in that humane and 
generous spirit which is Fielding's most engaging charac- 
teristic. The chapter immediately following, which de- 
scribes the literary and other inhabitants of Elysium, is 
even better. Here is Leonidas, who appears to be only 
moderately gratified with the honour recently done him by 
Mr. Glover the poet ; here is Homer, toying with Madame 
Dacier, and profoundly indifferent as to his birthplace 
and the continuity of his poems ; here, too, is Shakspeare, 
who, foreseeing future commentators and the " New 
Shakespere Society," declines to enlighten Betterton and 
Booth as to a disputed passage in his works, adding, " I 
marvel nothing- so much as that Men will o-ird themselves 
at discovering obscure Beauties in an Author. Certes the 
greatest and most pregnant Beauties are ever the plainest 
and most evidently striking ; and when two Meanings of 
a Passage can in the least ballance our Judgements which 
to prefer, I hold it matter of unquestionable Certainty that 



iv.] "JONATHAN WILD." 97 

neither is worth a farthing." Then, again, there are Ad- 
dison and Steele, who are described with so pleasant a 
knowledge of their personalities that, although the pas- 
sage has been often quoted, there seems to be no reason 
why it should not be quoted once more : 

" Virgil then came up to me, with Mr. Addison under his Arm. 
Well, Sir, said he, how many Translations have these few last Years 
produced of my jEneid? I told him, I believed several, but I could 
not possibly remember ; for I had never read any but Dr. Trapp's. 1 — 
Ay, said he, that is a curious Piece indeed ! I then acquainted him 
with the Discovery made by Mr. Warburton of the Eleusinian Mys- 
teries couched in his 6th Book. What Mysteries ? said Mr. Addison. 
The Eleusinian, answered Virgil, which I have disclosed in my 6th 
Book. How ! replied Addison. You never mentioned a word of 
any such Mysteries to me in all our Acquaintance. I thought it was 
unnecessary, cried the other, to a Man of your infinite Learning: 
besides, you always told me, you perfectly understood my meaning. 
Upon this I thought the Critic looked a little out of countenance, 
and turned aside to a very merry Spirit, one Dick Steele, who em- 
braced him, and told him, He had been the greatest Man upon Earth ; 
that he readily resigned up all the Merit of his own Works to him. 
Upon which, Addison gave him a gracious Smile, and clapping him 
on the Back with much Solemnity, cried out, Well said, Dick.'''' 

After encountering these and other notabilities, including 
Tom Thumb and Livy, the latter of whom takes occasion 
to commend the ingenious performances of Lady Marlbor- 
ough's assistant, Mr. Hooke, the author meets with Julian 
the Apostate, and from this point the narrative grows lan- 
guid. Its unfinished condition may perhaps be accepted as 
a proof that Fielding himself had wearied of his scheme. 

The third volume of the Miscellanies is wholly occu- 
pied with the remarkable work entitled the History of the 
Life of the late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great. As in the 
case of the Journey from this World to the Next, it is not 

1 Dr. Trapp's translation of the ^Eneid was published in 1718. 
5 



98 FIELDING. [chap. 

unlikely that the first germ of this may be found in the 
pages of the Champion. "Reputation" — says Fielding 
in one of the essays in that periodical — "often courts 
those most who regard her the least. Actions have some- 
times been attended with Fame, which were undertaken 
in Defiance of it. Jonathan Wyld himself had for many 
years no small Share of it in this Kingdom." The book 
now under consideration is the elaboration of the idea 
thus casually thrown out. Under the name of a notori- 
ous thief-taker hanged at Tyburn in 1725, Fielding has 
traced the Progress of a Rogue to the Gallows, showing 
by innumerable subtle touches that the (so-called) great- 
ness of a villain does not very materially differ from any 
other kind of greatness, which is equally independent of 
goodness. This continually suggested affinity between 
the ignoble and the pseudo-noble is the text of the book. 
Against genuine worth (its author is careful to explain) 
his satire is in no wise directed. He is far from consid- 
ering "Newgate as no other than Human Nature with its 
Mask off;" but he thinks "we may be excused for sus- 
pecting that the splendid Palaces of the Great are often 
no other than Newgate with the Mask on." Thus Jona- 
than Wild the Great is a prolonged satire upon the spuri- 
ous eminence in which benevolence, honesty, charity, and 
the like have no part ; or, as Fielding prefers to term it, 
that false or " Bombast greatness " which is so often mis- 
taken for the " true Sublime in Human Nature" — Great- 
ness and Goodness combined. So thoroughly has he ex- 
plained his intention in the Prefaces to the Miscellanies, 
and to tLc book itself, that it is difficult to comprehend 
how Scott could fail to see his drift. Possibly, like some 
orders, he found the subject repugnant and painful to his 
\ idly nature. Possibly, too, he did not, for this reason, 



iv.] "JONATHAN WILD." 99 

study the book very carefully, for, with the episode of 
Heartfree under one's eyes, it h not strictly accurate to 
say (as he does) that it presents " a picture of complete 
vice, unrelieved by anything of human feeling, and never 
by any accident even deviating into virtue." If the au- 
thor's introduction be borne in mind, and if the book be 
read steadily in the light there supplied, no one can re- 
frain from admiring the extraordinary skill and concen- 
tration with which the plan is pursued, and the adroitness 
with which, at every turn, the villainy of Wild is approxi- 
mated to that of those securer and more illustrious crimi- 
nals with whom he is so seldom confused. And Fielding 
has never carried one of his chief and characteristic excel- 
lences to so great perfection : the book is a model of sus- 
tained and sleepless irony. To make any extracts from it 
— still less to make any extracts which should do justice 
to it — is almost impracticable ; but the edifying discourse 
between Wild and Count La Ruse in Book I., and the 
pure comedy of that in Book IV. with the Ordinary of 
Newgate (who objects to wine, but drinks punch because 
"it is no where spoken against in Scripture"), as well as 
the account of the prison faction between Wild and John- 
son, 1 with its admirable speech of the "grave Man" against 

1 Some critics at this point appear to have identified Johnson and 
Wild with Lord Wilmington and Sir Robert Walpole (who resigned 
in 1742), while Mr. Keightley suspects that Wild throughout typifies 
Walpole. But, in his advertisement to the edition of 1*754, Fielding 
expressly disclaims any such " personal Application." " The Truth 
is (he says), as a very corrupt State of Morals is here represented, 
the Scene seems very properly to have been laid in Newgate: Nor 
do I see any Reason for introducing any allegory at all; unless we 
will agree that there are, without those Walls, some other Bodies of 
Men of worse Morals than those within ; and who have, consequent- 
ly, a Right to change Places with its present Inhabitants." 



100 FIELDING. [chap. 

Party, may all be cited as examples of its style and meth- 
od. Nor should the character of Wild in the last chap- 
ter, and his famous rules of conduct, be neglected. It 
must be admitted, however, that the book is not calculated 
to suit the nicely-sensitive in letters ; or, it may be added, 
those readers for whom the evolution of a purely intellect- 
ual conception is either unmeaning or uninteresting. Its 
place in Fielding's works is immediately after his three 
great novels, and this is more by reason of its subject 
than its workmanship, which could hardly be excelled. 
When it was actually composed is doubtful. If it may 
be connected with the already -quoted passage in the 
Champion, it must be placed after March, 1740, which is 
the date of the paper; but, from a reference to Peter 
Pounce in Book II., it might also be supposed to have 
been written after Joseph Andrews. The Bath simile in 
Chapter XIV., Book I., makes it likely that some part of 
it was penned at that place, where, from an epigram in the 
Miscellanies " written Extempore in the Pump Room," it 
is clear that Fielding was staying in 1742. But, when- 
ever it was completed, we are inclined to think that it was 
planned and begun before Joseph Andrews was published, 
as it is in the highest degree improbable that Fielding, 
always carefully watching the public taste, would have 
followed up that fortunate adventure in a new direction 
by a work so entirely different from it as Jonathan Wild. 
A second edition of the Miscellanies appeared in the 
same year as the first, namely, in 1743. From this date 
until the publication of Tom Jones in 1749, Fielding pro- 
duced no work of signal importance, and his personal his- 
tory for the next few years is exceedingly obscure. We 
are inclined to suspect that this must have been the most 
trying period of his career. His health was shattered, and 



it.] "JONATHAN WILD." 101 

he had become a martyr to gout, which seriously interfered 
with the active practice of his profession. Again, " about 
this time," says Murphy vaguely, after speaking of the 
Wedding Day, he lost his first wife. That she was alive 
in the winter of 1*742-3 is clear, for, in the Preface to the 
Miscellanies, he describes himself as being then laid up, 
" with a favourite Child dying in one Bed, and my Wife 
in a Condition very little better, on another, attended with 
other Circumstances, which served as very proper Decora- 
tions to such a Scene" — by which Mr. Keightley no doubt 
rightly supposes him to refer to writs and bailiffs. It must 
also be assumed that Mrs. Fielding was alive when the 
Preface was written, since, in apologising for an apparent 
delay in publishing the book, he says the "real Reason" 
was " the dangerous Illness of one from whom I draw [the 
italics are ours] all the solid Comfort of my Life." There 
is another unmistakable reference to her in one of the mi- 
nor papers in the first volume, viz., that Of the Remedy of 
Affliction for the Loss of our Friends. "I remember the 
most excellent of Women, and tenderest of Mothers, when, 
after a painful and dangerous Delivery, she was told she 
had a Daughter, answering : Good God ! have I produced a 
Creature who is to undergo ivhat I have suffered! Some 
Years afterwards, I heard the same Woman, on the Death 
of that very Child, then one of the loveliest Creatures ever 
seen, comforting herself with reflecting, that her Child could 
never know what it was to feel such a Loss as she then la- 
mented.^ Were it not for the passages already quoted from 
the Preface, it might almost be concluded from the tone 
of that foregoing quotation and the final words of the pa- 
per, which refer to our meeting with those we have lost in 
Heaven, that Mrs. Fielding was already dead. But the use 
of the word " draw " in the Preface affords distinct evi- 



102 FIELDING. [chap. 

dence to the contrary. It is therefore most probable that 
she died in the latter part of 1743, having been long in a 
declining state of health. For a time her husband was in- 
consolable. " The fortitude of mind, 1 ' says. Murphy, " with 
which' he met all the other calamities of life, deserted him 
on this most trying occasion." His grief was so vehement 
" that his friends began to think him in danger of losing 
his reason." 

That Fielding had depicted his first wife in Sophia 
Western has already been pointed out, and we have the 
authority of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Richardson 
for saying that she was afterwards reproduced in Amelia. 
"Amelia," says the latter, in a letter to Mrs. Donnellan, 
"even to her noselessness, is again his first wife." Some 
of her traits, too, are to be detected in the Mrs. Wilson of 
Joseph Andrews. But, beyond these indications, we hear 
little about her. Almost all that is definitely known is 
contained in a passage of the admirable Introductory An- 
ecdotes contributed by Lady Louisa Stuart in 1837 to Lord 
Wharncliffe's edition of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's 
Letters and Works. This account was based upon the 
recollections of Lady Bute, Lady Mary's daughter : 

"Only those persons (says Lady Stuart) are mentioned here of 
whom Lady Bute could speak from her own recollection or her moth- 
er's report. Both had made her well informed of every particular 
that concerned her relation Henry Fielding ; nor was she a stranger 
to that beloved first wife whose picture he drew in his Amelia, where, 
as she said, even the glowing language he knew how to employ did 
not do more than justice to the amiable qualities of the original, or 
to her beauty, although this had suffered a little from the accident 
related in the novel — a frightful overturn, which destroyed the gristle 
of her nose. 1 He loved her passionately, and she returned his affec- 

1 That any one could have remained lovely after such a catastrophe 



i y.J "JONATHAN WILD." 103 

tion ; yet led no happy life, for they were almost always miserably 
poor, and seldom in a state of quiet and safety. All the world knows 
what was his imprudence ; if ever he possessed a score of pounds, 
nothing could keep him from lavishing it idly, or make him think of 
to-morrow. Sometimes they were living in decent lodgings with tol- 
erable comfort ; sometimes in a wretched garret without necessaries ; 
not to- speak of the spunging-houses and hiding-places where he was 
occasionally to be found. His elastic gaiety of spirit carried him 
through it all ; but, meanwhile, care and anxiety were preying upon 
her more delicate mind, and undermining her constitution. She grad- 
ually declined, caught a fever, and died in his arms." 

As usual, Mr. Keightley has done his best to test this 
statement to the utmost. Part of his examination may be 
neglected, because it is based upon the misconception that 
Lord Wharncliffe, Lady Mary's greatgrandson, and not 
Lady Stuart, her granddaughter, was the writer of the fore- 
going account. But as a set-off to the extreme destitution 
alleged, Mr. Keightley very justly observes that Mrs. Field- 
is difficult to believe. But probably Lady Bute (or Lady Stuart) ex- 
aggerated its effects ; for — to say nothing of the fact that, through- 
out tfre novel, Amelia's beauty is continually commended — in the de- 
lightfully feminine description which is given of her by Mrs. James 
in Book XI., Chap. I., pp. 114-15, of the first edition of 1752, although 
she is literally pulled to pieces, there is no reference whatever to her 
nose, which may be taken as proof positive that it was not an assail- 
able feature. Moreover, in the book, as we now have it, Fielding, ob- 
viously in deference to contemporary criticism, inserted the following 
specific passages : " She was, indeed, a most charming woman ; and 
I know not whether the little scar on her nose did not rather add to, 
than diminish her beauty " (Book IV., Chap. VII.) ; and in Mrs. James's 
portrait : " Then her nose, as well proportioned as it is, has a visible 
scar on one side." No previous biographer seems to have thought it 
necessary to make any mention of these statements, while Johnson's 
speech about " That vile broken nose, never cured" and Richardson's 
coarsely-malignant utterance to Mrs. Donnellan, are everywhere in- 
dustriously remembered and repeated. 
H 



104 FIELDING. [chap. 

ing must for some time have had a maid, since it was a 
maid who had been devotedly attached to her whom Field- 
ing subsequently married. He also argues that " living in 
a garret and skulking in out o' the way retreats," are in- 
compatible with studying law and practising as a barrister. 
Making every allowance, however, for the somewhat exag- 
gerated way in which those of high rank often speak of 
the distresses of their less opulent kinsfolk, it is probable 
that Fielding's married life was one of continual shifts and 
privations. Such a state of things is completely in accord- 
ance with his profuse nature 1 and his precarious means. 
Of his family by the first Mrs. Fielding no very material 
particulars have been preserved. Writing, in November, 
1745, in the True Patriot,, he speaks of having a son and a 
daughter, but no son by his first wife seems to have sur- 
vived him. The late Colonel Chester found the burial of 
a "James Fielding, son of Henry Fielding," recorded un- 
der date of 19th February, 1736, in the register of St. Giles 
in the Fields ; but it is by no means certain that this entry 
refers to the novelist. A daughter, Eleanor Harriot, cer- 
tainly did survive him, for she is mentioned in the Voyage 
to Lisbon as being of the party who accompanied him. 
Another daughter, as already stated, probably died in the 
winter of 1742-3; and the Journey from this World to 
the Next contains the touching reference to this or another 
child, of which Dickens writes so warmly in one of his let- 
ters. " I presently," says Fielding, speaking of his entrance 
into Elysium, " met a little Daughter, whom I had lost sev- 
eral Years before. Good Gods ! what Words can describe 
the Raptures, the melting passionate Tenderness, with 
which we kiss'd each other, continuing in our Embrace, 

1 The passage as to his imprudence is, oddly enough, omitted from 
Mr. Keightley's quotation. 



iv.] "JONATHAN WILD." 105 

with the most extatic Joy, a Space, which if Time had been 
measured here as on Earth, could not have been less than 
half a Year." 

From* the death of Mrs. Fielding until the publication of 
the True Patriot in 1745 another comparative blank en- 
sues in Fielding's history ; and it can only be filled by the 
assumption that he was still endeavouring to follow his 
profession as a barrister. His literary work seems to have 
been confined to a Preface to the second edition of his 
sister's novel of David Simple, which appeared in 1744. 
This, while rendering fraternal justice to that now forgot- 
ten book, is memorable for some personal utterances on 
Fielding's part. In denying the authorship of David Sim- 
ple, which had been attributed to him, he takes occasion 
to appeal against the injustice of referring anonymous 
works to his pen, in the face of his distinct engagement 
in the Preface to the Miscellanies, that he would thence- 
forth write nothing except over his own signature ; and 
he complains that such a course has a tendency to injure 
him in a profession to which " he has applied with so ar- 
duous and intent a diligence, that he has had no leisure, if 
he had inclination, to compose anything of this kind" (i. e., 
David Simple). At the same time, he formally with- 
draws his promise, since it has in no wise exempted him 
from the scandal of putting forth anonymous work. From 
other passages in this " Preface," it may be gathered the 
immediate cause of irritation was the assignment to his 
pen of " that infamous paultry libel " the Causidicade, a 
satire directed at the law in general, and some of the sub- 
scribers to the Miscellanies in particular. "This," he 
says, " accused me not only of being a bad writer, and a 
bad man, but with downright idiotism, in flying in the 
face of the greatest men of my profession." It may easily 
5* 



106 FIELDING. [chap. 

be conceived that such a report must be unfavourable to a 
struggling barrister, and Fielding's anxiety on this head is 
a strong proof that he was still hoping to succeed at the 
Bar. To a subsequent collection of Familiar Letters be- 
tween the Principal Characters in David Simple and some 
others, he supplied another preface three years later; but 
beyond a complimentary reference to Lyttelton's Persian 
Letters, it has no biographical interest. 

A life of ups and downs like Fielding's is seldom re- 
markable for its consistency. It is therefore not surpris- 
ing to find that, despite his desire in 1744 to refrain from 
writing, he was again writing in 1745. The landing of 
Charles Edward attracted him once more into the ranks 
of journalism, on the side of the Government, and gave 
rise to the True Patriot, a weekly paper, the first number 
of which appeared in November. This, having come to 
an end with the Rebellion, was succeeded in December, 
1747, by the Jacobite's Journal, supposed to emanate from 
"John Trott-Plaid, Esq.," and intended to push the dis- 
comfiture of Jacobite sentiment still further. It is need- 
less to discuss these mainly political efforts at any length. 
They are said to have been highly approved by those in 
power : it is certain that they earned for their author the 
stigma of <( pension'd scribbler." Both are now very rare ; 
and in Murphy the former is represented by twenty-four 
numbers, the latter by two only. The True Patriot con- 
tains a dream of London abandoned to the rebels, which is 
admirably graphic ; and there is also a prophetic chroni- 
cle of- events for 1746 in which the same idea is treated in 
a lighter and more satirical vein. But perhaps the most 
interesting feature is the reappearance of Parson Adams, 
who addresses a couple of letters to the same periodical — 
one on the rising generally, and the other on the " Young 



iv.] "JONATHAN WILD." 10? 

England " of the day, as exemplified in a very offensive 
specimen lie had recently encountered at Mr. Wilson's. 
Other minor points of interest in connection with the Jaco- 
bites Journal, are the tradition associating Hogarth with 
the rude woodcut headpiece (a Scotch man and woman on 
an ass led by a monk) which surmounted its earlier num- 
bers, and the genial welcome given in No. 5, perhaps not 
without some touch of contrition, to the two first volumes, 
then just published, of Richardson's Clarissa. The pen is 
the pen of an imaginary " correspondent," but the words 
are unmistakably Fielding's: 

" When I tell you I have lately received this Pleasure [i. e., of 
reading a new master-piece], you will not want me to inform you 
that I owe it to the Author of Clarissa. Such Simplicity, such 
Manners, such deep Penetration into Nature ; such Power to raise 
and alarm the Passions, few Writers, either ancient or modern, have 
been possessed of. My Affections are so strongly engaged, and my 
Fears are so raised, by what I have already read, that I cannot ex- 
press my Eagerness to see the rest. Sure this Mr. Richardson is 
Master of all that Art which Hot-ace compares to Witchcraft 

— Pectus inaniter angit, 
Irritat, mulcet, falsis terroribus implet 
Ut Magus.—" 

Between the discontinuance of the True Patriot and 
the establishment of its successor occurred an event, the 
precise date of which has been hitherto Unknown, namely, 
Fielding's second marriage. The account given of this by 
Lady Louisa Stuart is as follows : 

" His [Fielding's] biographers seem to have been shy of disclosing 
that after the death of this charming woman [his first wife] he 
married her maid. And yet the act was not so discreditable to his 
character as it may sound. The maid had few personal charms, 
but was an excellent creature, devotedly attached to her mistress, 



108 FIELDING. [chap. 

and almost broken-hearted for her loss. In the first agonie3 of his 
own grief, which approached to frenzy, he found no relief but from 
weeping along with her ; nor solace, when a degree calmer, but in 
talking to her of the angel they mutually regretted. This made her 
his habitual confidential associate, and in process of time he began 
to think be could not give his children a tenderer mother, or secure 
for himself a more faithful housekeeper and nurse. At least, this 
was what he told his friends; and it is certain that her conduct as 
his wife confirmed it, and fully justified his good opinion." 

It has now been ascertained that the marriage took place 
at St. Benet's, Paul's Wharf, an obscure little church in 
the City, at present surrendered to a Welsh congregation, 
but at that time, like Mary-le-bone old church, much in re- 
quest for unions of a private character. The date in the 
register is the 27th of November, 1747. The second Mrs. 
Fielding's maiden name, which has been hitherto variously 
reported as Macdonnell, Macdonald, and Macdaniel, is given 
as Mary Daniel, 1 and she is further described as " of St. 
Clement's Danes, Middlesex, Spinster." Either previously 
to this occurrence, or immediately after it, Fielding seems 
to have taken two rooms in a house in Back Lane, Twick- 
enham, " not far," says the Rev. Mr. Cobbett in his Memo- 
rials, "from the site of Copt Hall." In 1872 this house 
was still standing— a quaint old-fashioned wooden struct- 
ure 2 — and from hence, on the 25th of February, 1748, was 
baptized the first of the novelist's sons concerning whom 
any definite information exists — the William Fielding who, 
like his father, became a Westminster magistrate. Beyond 
suggesting that it may supply a reason why, during Mrs. 
Fielding's life-time, her husband's earliest biographer made 
no reference to the marriage, it is needless to dwell upon 

1 See note to Fielding's letter in Chap. VII. 

2 Now (1883) it no longer exists, and a row of cottages occupies 
the site. 



iv.] "JONATHAN WILD." 109 

the proximity between the foregoing dates. In other re- 
spects the circumstance now first made public is » not in- 
consistent with Lady Stuart's narrative ; and there is no 
doubt, from the references to her in the Journal of a Voy- 
age to Lisbon and elsewhere, that Mary Daniel did prove 
an excellent wife, mother, and nurse. Another thing is 
made clear by the date established, and this is that the 
verses " On Felix ; Marry 'd to a Cook- Maid," in the Gen- 
tleman's Magazine for July, 1746, to which Mr. Lawrence 
refers, cannot possibly have anything to do with Fielding, 
although they seem to indicate that alliances of the kind 
were not unusual. Perhaps Pamela had made them fash- 
ionable. On the other hand, the supposed allusion to Lyt- 
telton and Fielding, to be found in the first edition of 
Peregrine Pickle, but afterwards suppressed, receives a cer- 
tain confirmation. "When," says Smollett, speaking of 
the relations of an imaginary Mr. Spondy with Gosling 
Scrag, who is understood to represent Lyttelton, "he is 
inclined to marry his own cook-wench, his gracious patron 
may condescend to give the bride away ; and may finally 
settle him in his old age, as a trading Westminster jus- 
tice." That, looking to the facts, Fielding's second mar- 
riage should have gained the approval and countenance of 
Lyttelton is no more than the upright and honourable 
character of the latter would lead us to expect. 

The Jacobite's Journal ceased to appear in November, 
1748. In the early part of the December following, the 
remainder of Smollett's programme came to pass, and by 
Lyttelton's interest Fielding was appointed a Justice of 
the Peace for Westminster. From a letter in the Bedford 
Correspondence, dated 13th of December, 1748, respecting 
the lease of a house or houses which would qualify him to 
act for Middlesex, it would seem that the county was af- 



1 10 FIELDING. [chap. rr. 

terwards added to his commission. He must have entered 
upon his, office in the first weeks of December, as upon 
the 9th of that month one John Salter was committed to 
the Gatehouse by Henry Fielding, Esq., " of Bow Street, 
Covent Garden, formerly Sir Thomas de Veil's." Sir 
Thomas de Veil, who died in 1746, and whose Memoirs 
had just been published, could not, however, have been 
Fielding's immediate predecessor. 



CHAPTER V. 



Writing from Basingstoke to his brother Tom, on the 
29th of October, 1746, Joseph Warton thus refers to a 
visit he paid to Fielding : 

" I wish you had been with me last week, when I spent two even- 
ings with Fielding and his sister, who wrote David Simple, and you 
may guess I was very well entertained. The lady, indeed, retir'd 
pretty soon, but Russell and I sat up with the Poet [Warton no 
doubt uses the word here in the sense of " maker" or " creator "] 
till one or two in the morning, and were inexpressibly diverted. I 
find he values, as he justly may, his Joseph Andrews above all his 
writings : he was extremely civil to me, I fancy, on my Father's ac- 
count." J 

This mention of Joseph Andrews has misled some of 
Fielding's biographers into thinking that he ranked that 
novel above Tom Jones. But, in October, 1746, Tom 
Jones had not been published ; and, from the absence of 
any reference to it by Warton, it is only reasonable to 
conclude that it had not yet assumed a definite form, or 
Fielding, who was by no means uncommunicative, would 
in all probability have spoken of it as an effort from which 
he expected still greater things. It is clear, too, that at 

1 I. e., the Rev. Thomas Warton, Vicar of Basingstoke, and some- 
time Professor of Poetry at Oxford. 



112 FIELDING, [chap. 

this date he was staying in London, presumably in lodg- 
ings with his sister; and it is also most likely that he lived 
much in town when he was conducting the True Patriot 
and the Jacobite's Journal. At other times he would ap- 
pear to have had no settled place of abode. There are tra- 
ditions that Tom Jones was composed in part at Salisbury, 
in a house at the foot of Milford Hill ; and again that it 
was written at Twiverton, or Twerton-on-Avon, near Bath, 
where, as the Vicar pointed out in Notes and Queries for 
March 15th, 1879, there still exists a house called Field- 
ing's Lodge, over the door of which is a stone crest of a 
phoenix rising out of a mural coronet. This latter tradi- 
tion is supported by the statement of Mr. Richard Graves, 
author of the Spiritual Quixote, and rector, circa 1750, of 
the neighbouring parish of Claverton, who says in his Tri- 
fling Anecdotes of the late Ralph Allen, that Fielding while 
at Twerton used to dine almost daily with Allen at Prior 
Park. There are also traces of his residence at Bath itself; 
and of visits to the seat of Lyttelton's father at Hagley, in 
Worcestershire. Towards the close of 1747 he had, as be- 
fore stated, rooms in Back Lane, Twickenham ; and it 
must be to this or to some earlier period that Walpole al- 
ludes in his Parish Register (1759) : 

" Here Fielding met his bunter Muse 
And, as they quaff'd the fiery juice, 
Droll Nature starap'd each lucky hit 
With unimaginable wit ;" — 

a quatrain in which the last lines excuse the first. Accord- 
ing to Mr. Cobbett's already-quoted Memorials of Twicken- 
ham, he left that place upon his appointment as a Middle- 
sex magistrate, when he moved to Bow Street. His house 
in Bow Street belonged to John, Duke of Bedford ; and 



v.] . "TOM JONES.' 



113 



he continued to live in it until a short time before his 
death. It was subsequently occupied by his half brother 
and successor, Sir John, 1 who, writing to the Duke in 
March, 1770, to thank him for his munificent gift of an 
additional ten years to the lease, recalls " that princely in- 
stance of generosity which his Grace shewed to his late 
brother, Henry Fielding." 

What this was is not specified. It may have been the 
gift of the leases of those tenements which, as explained, 
were necessary to qualify Fielding to act as a Justice of 
the Peace for the county of Middlesex ; it may even have 
been the lease of the Bow Street house; or it may have 
been simply a gift of money. But whatever it was, it 
was something considerable. In his appeal to the Duke, 
at the close of the last chapter, Fielding referred to pre- 
vious obligations, and in his dedication of Tom Jones to 
Lyttelton, he returns again to his Grace's beneficence. 
Another person, of whose kindness grateful but indirect 
mention is made in the same dedication, is Ralph Allen, 
who, according to Derrick, the Bath M.C., sent the novel- 
ist a present of £200, before he had even made his ac- 
quaintance, 2 which, from the reference to Allen in Joseph 
Andrews, probably began before 1743. Lastly, there is 
Lyttelton himself, concerning whom, in addition to a sen- 
tence which implies that he actually suggested the writing 
of Tom Jones, we have the express statements on Field- 
ing's part that " without your Assistance this History had 
never been completed," and " I partly owe to you my 
Existence during great Part of the Time which I have 

1 In the riots of '80 — as Dickens has not forgotten to note in 
Bamaby Rudge — the house was destroyed by the mob, who burned 
Sir John's goods in the street (Boswell's Johnson, chap. Ixx.). 

2 Derrick's Letter, 1767, ii. 95. 



114 FIELDING. [chap. 

employed in composing it." These words must plainly 
be accepted as indicating pecuniary help ; and, taking all 
things together, there can be little doubt that for some 
years antecedent to his appointment as a Justice of the 
Peace, Fielding was in straitened circumstances, and was 
largely aided, if not practically supported, by his friends. 
Even supposing him to have been subsidised by Govern- 
ment as alleged, his profits from the True Patriot and the 
Jacobite's Journal could not have been excessive ; and his 
gout, of which he speaks in one of his letters to the Duke 
of Bedford, must have been a serious obstacle in the way 
of his legal labours. 

The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, was published 
by Andrew Millar on the 28th of February, 1749, and its 
appearance in six volumes, 12mo, was announced in the 
General Advertizer of that day's date. There had been 
no author's name on the title-page of Joseph Andrews ; 
but Tom Jones was duly described as " by Henry Field- 
ing, Esq.," and bore the motto from Horace, seldom so 
justly applied, of " Mores hominum multorum vidit." 
The advertisement also ingenuously stated that as it was 
" impossible to get Sets bound fast enough to answer the 
Demand for them, such Gentlemen and Ladies as pleased, 
might have them sew'd in Blue Paper and Boards at the 
Price of 16s. a Set." The date of issue sufficiently dis- 
poses of the statement of Cunningham and others, that the 
book was written at Bow Street. Little more than the 
dedication, which is preface as well, can have been pro- 
duced by Fielding in his new home. Making fair allow- 
ance for the usual tardy progress of a book through the 
press, and taking into consideration the fact that the 
author was actively occupied with his yet unfamiliar mag- 
isterial duties, it is most probable that the last chapter of 



v.] "TOM JONES." 115 

Tom Jones had been penned before the end of 1*748, and 
that after that time it had been at the printer's. For the 
exact price paid to the author by the publisher on this 
occasion we are indebted to Horace Walpole, who, writing 
to George Montagu in May, 1749, says: "Millar the book- 
seller has done very generously by him [Fielding] : finding 
Tom Jones, for which he had given him six hundred pounds, 
sell so greatly, he has since given him another hundred." 

It is time, however, to turn from these particulars to 
the book itself. In Joseph Andrews Fielding's work had 
been mainly experimental. He had set out with an inten- 
tion which had unexpectedly developed into something 
else. That something else, he had explained, was the 
comic epic in prose. He had discovered its scope and 
possibilities only when it was too late to re-cast his original 
design ; and though Joseph Andrews has all the freshness 
and energy of a first attempt in a new direction, it has also 
the manifest disadvantages of a mixed conception and an 
uncertain plan. No one had perceived these defects more 
plainly than the author ; and in Tom Jones he set himself 
diligently to perfect his new-found method. He believed 
that he foresaw a lf new Province of Writing," of which 
he regarded himself with justice as the founder and law- 
giver ; and in the " prolegomenous, or introductory Chap- 
ters," to each book — those delightful resting-spaces where, 
as George Eliot says, " he seems to bring his arm-chair to 
the proscenium and chat with us in all the lusty ease of 
his fine English " — he takes us, as it were, into his con- 
fidence, and discourses frankly of his aims and his way of 
work. He looked upon these little " initial Essays," indeed, 
as an indispensable part of his scheme, They have given 
him, says he more than once, " the greatest Pains in com- 
posing " of any part of his book, and he hopes that,, like 



116 FIELDING. [chap. 

the Greek and Latin mottoes in the Spectator, they may 
serve to secure him against imitation by inferior writers. 1 
Naturally a great deal they contain is by this time com- 
monplace, although it was unhackneyed enough when 
Fielding wrote. The absolute necessity in writing of this 
kind for genius, learning, and knowledge of the world, the 
constant obligation to preserve character and probability — 
to regard variety and the law of contrast — these are things 
with which the modern tyro (however much he may fail 
to possess or observe them) is now supposed to be at least 
theoretically acquainted. But there are other chapters in 
which Fielding may also be said to reveal his personal 
point of view, and these can scarcely be disregarded. His 
" Fare," he says, following the language of the table, is 
" Human Nature," which he shall first present " in that 
more plain and simple Manner in which it is found in the 
Country," and afterwards " hash and ragoo it with all the 
high French and Italian seasoning of Affectation and 
Vice which Courts and Cities afford." His inclination, 
he admits, is rather to the middle and lower classes than 
to "the highest Life," which he considers to present " very 
little Humour or Entertainment." His characters (as be- 
fore) are based upon actual experience ; or, as he terms it, 
"Conversation." He does not propose to present his 
reader with " Models of Perfection ;" he has never hap- 
pened to meet with those " faultless Monsters." He holds 
that mankind is constitutionally defective, and that a 
single bad act does not, of necessity, imply a bad nature. 
He has also observed, without surprise, that virtue in this 

1 Notwithstanding this warning, Cumberland (who copied so 
much) copied these in his novel of Henry. On the " other hand, 
Fielding's French and Polish translators omitted them as super- 
fluous. 



v.] "TOM JONES." 117 

world is not always " the certain Road to Happiness," 
nor " Vice to Misery." In short, having been admitted 
" behind the scenes of this Great Theatre of Nature," he 
paints humanity as he has found it, extenuating nothing, 
nor setting down aught in malice, but reserving the full 
force of his satire and irony for affectation and hypocrisy. 
His sincere endeavour, he says moreover in his dedication 
to Lyttelton, has been " to recommend Goodness and In- 
nocence," and promote the cause of religion and virtue. 
And he has all the consciousness that what he is engaged 
upon is no ordinary enterprise. He is certain that his 
pages will outlive both "their own infirm Author" and 
his enemies ; and he appeals to Fame to solace and re- 
assure him : 

" Come, bright Love of Fame" — says the beautiful "Invocation" 
which begins the thirteenth Book — " inspire my glowing Breast : 
Not thee I call, who over swelling Tides of Blood and Tears, dost 
bear the Heroe on to Glory, while Sighs of Millions waft his spread- 
ing Sails ; but thee, fair, gentle Maid, whom Mnesis, happy Nymph, 
first on the Banks of Hebrus didst produce. Thee, whom Maeonia 
educated, whom Mantua charm'd, and who, on that fair Hill which 
overlooks the proud Metropolis of Britain, sat, with thy Milton , 
sweetly tuning the Heroic Lyre; fill my ravished Fancy with tb«s 
Hopes of charming Ages yet to come. Foretel me that some tender 
Maid, whose Grandmother is yet unborn, hereafter, when, under th« 
fictitious Name of Sophia, she reads the real Worth which one* 
existed in my Charlotte, shall, from her sympathetic Breast, sen»i 
forth the heaving Sigh. Do thou teach me not only to foresee, bu' 
to enjoy, nay, even to feed on future Praise. Comfort me by <* 
solemn Assurance, that when the little Parlour in which I sit at this 
Instant, shall be reduced to a worse furnished Box, I shall be read, 
with Honour, by those who never knew nor saw me, and whom I 
shall neither know nor see." 

With no less earnestness, after a mock apostrophe to 
Wealth, he appeals to Genius: 



118 FIELDING. [chap. 

"Teach me [he exclaims], which to thee is no difficult Task, to 
know Mankind better than they know themselves. Remove that 
Mist which dims the Intellects of Mortals, and causes them to adore 
Men for their Art, or to detest them for their Cunning in deceiving 
others, when they are, in Reality, the Objects only of Ridicule, for 
deceiving themselves. Strip off the thin Disguise of Wisdom from 
Self-Conceit, of Pie*-'' - f rom Avarice, and of Glory from Ambition. 
Come thou, that hast inspired thy Aristophanes, thy Lucian, thy 
Cervantes, thy Rabelais, thy Moliere, thy Shakespear, thy Swift, thy 
Marivauz, fill my Pages with Humour, 'till Mankind learn the Good- 
Nature to laugh only at the Follies of others, and the Humility to 
grieve at their own." 

From the little group of immortals who are here enu- 
merated, it may be gathered with whom Fielding sought 
to compete, and with whom he hoped hereafter to be as- 
sociated. His hopes were not in vain. Indeed, in one 
respect, he must be held to have even outrivalled that 
particular predecessor with whom he has been oftenest 
compared. Like Don Quixote, Tom Jones is the precursor 
of a new order of things — the earliest and freshest expres- 
sion of a new departure in art. But while Tom Jones is, 
to the full, as amusing as Don Quixote, it has the advan- 
tage of a greatly superior plan, and an interest more skil- 
fully sustained. The incidents which, in Cervantes, sim- 
ply succeed each other like the scenes in a panorama, are, 
in Tom Jones, but parts of an organised and carefully^ 
arranged progression towards a foreseen conclusion. As 
the hero and heroine cross and recross each other's track, 
there is scarcely an episode which does not aid in the 
moving forward of the story. Little details rise lightly 
and naturally to the surface of the narrative, not more 
noticeable at first than the most everyday occurrences, 
and a few pages farther on become of the greatest im- 
portance. The hero makes a mock proposal of marriage 



v.] "TOM JONES." 119 

to Lady Bellaston. It scarcely detains attention, so nat- 
ural an expedient does it appear, and behold in a chapter 
or two it has become a terrible weapon in the hands of the 
injured Sophia! Again, when the secret of Jones' birth 1 
is finally disclosed, we look back and discover a hundred 
little premonitions which escaped us at first, but which, 
read by the light of our latest knowledge, assume a fresh 
significance. At the same time, it must be admitted that 
the over-quoted and somewhat antiquated dictum of Cole- 
ridge, by which Tom Jones is grouped with the Alchemist 
and (Edipus Tp-annus, as one of the three most perfect 
plots in the world, requires revision. It is impossible to 
apply the term "perfect" to a work which contains such 
an inexplicable stumbling-block as the Man of the Hill's 
story. Then, again, progress and animation alone will not 
make a perfect plot, unless probability be superadded. 
And although it cannot be said that Fielding disregards 
probability, he certainly strains it considerably. Money 
is conveniently lost and found ; the naivest coincidences 
continually occur; people turn up in the nick of time at 
the exact spot required, and develop the most needful (but 
entirely casual) relations with the characters. Sometimes 
an episode is so inartistically introduced as to be almost 
clumsy. Towards the end of the book, for instance, it 
has to be shown that Jones has still some power of re- 
sisting temptation, and he accordingly receives from a 
Mrs. Arabella Hunt a written offer of her hand, which he 
declines. Mrs. Hunt's name has never been mentioned 

1 Much ink has been shed respecting Fielding's reason for mak- 
ing his hero illegitimate. But may not " The History of Tom Jones, 
a Foundling" have had no subtler origin than the recent establish- 
ment of the Foundling Hospital, of which Fielding had written in 
the Champion, and in which his friend Hogarth was interested ? 
1 



120 FIELDING. [chap. 

before, -nor, after this occurrence, is it mentioned again. 
But in the brief fortnight which Jones has been in town, 
with his head full of Lady Bellaston, Sophia, and the rest, 
we are to assume that he has unwittingly inspired her 
with so desperate a passion that she proposes and is re- 
fused — all in a chapter. Imperfections of this kind are 
more worthy of consideration than some of the minor 
negligences which criticism has amused itself by detecting 
in this famous book Such, among others, is the discov- 
ery made by a writer in the Gentleman's Magazine, that in 
one place winter and summer come too close together ; or 
the " strange specimen of oscitancy " which another (it is, 
in fact, Mr. Keightley) considers it worth while to record 
respecting the misplacing of the village of Hambrook. To 
such trifles as these last the precept of non offendar maculis 
may safely be applied, although Fielding, wiser than his 
critics, seems to have foreseen the necessity for still larger 
allowances: 

" Cruel indeed " — says he in his proemium to Book XL — " would 
it be, if such a Work as this History, which hath employed some 
Thousands of Hours in the composing, should be liable to be condemn- 
ed, because some particular Chapter, or perhaps Chapters, may be 
obnoxious to very just and sensible Objections. ... To write within 
such severe Rules as these, is as impossible as to live up to some 
splenetic Opinions ; and if we judge according to the Sentiments 
of some Critics, and of some Christians, no Author will be saved in 
this World, and no Man in the next." 

Notwithstanding its admitted superiority to Joseph An- 
drews as a work of art, there is no male character in Tom 
Jones which can compete with Parson Adams — none cer- 
tainly which we regard with equal admiration. All- 
worthy, excellent compound of Lyttelton and Allen though 
he be, remains always a little stiff and cold in comparison 



v.] "TOM JONES." 121 

with the " veined humanity " around him. We feel of 
him, as of another impeccable personage, that we "cannot 
breathe in that fine air, that pure severity of perfect light," 
and that we want the " warmth and colour " which we 
find in Adams. Allworthy is a type rather than a char- 
acter — a fault which also seems to apply to that Molier- 
esque hypocrite, the younger Blifil. Fielding seems to 
have welded this latter together, rather than to have fused 
him entire, and the result is a certain lack of verisimili- 
tude, which makes us wonder how his pinchbeck profes- 
sions and vamped-up virtues could deceive so many per- 
sons. On the other band, his father, Captain John Blifil, 
has all the look of life. Nor can there be any doubt about 
the vitality of Squire Western. Whether the germ of his 
character be derived from Addison's Tory Foxhunter or 
not, it is certain that Fielding must have had superabun- 
dant material of his own from which to model this thor- 
oughly representative and, at the same time, completely 
individual character. Western has all the rustic tastes, 
the narrow prejudices, the imperfect education, the un- 
reasoning hatred to the court, which distinguished the 
Jacobite country gentleman of the Georgian era ; but his 
divided love for his daughter and his horses, his good- 
humour and his shrewdness, his foaming impulses and his 
quick subsidings, his tears, his oaths, and his barbaric dia- 
lect, are all essential features in a personal portrait. When 
Jones has rescued Sophia, he will give him all his stable, 
the Chevalier and Miss Slouch excepted ; when he finds 
he is in love with her, he is in a frenzy to "get at un" 
and " spoil his Caterwauling." He will have the surgeon's 
heart's blood if he takes a drop too much from Sophia's 
white arm ; when she opposes his wishes as to Blifil, he 
will turn her into the street with no more than a smock, 
6 



l?2 FIELDING. [chap. 

and give his estate to the "sinking Fund." Throughout 
the book he is qaalis ab incepto — boisterous, brutal, jovial, 
and inimitable ; so that when finally, in " Chapter the 
Last," we get that pretty picture of him in Sophy's nurs- 
ery, protesting that the tattling of his little granddaugh- 
ter is " sweeter Music than the finest Cry of Dogs in 
England" we part with him almost with a feeling of es- 
teem. Scott seems to have thought it unreasonable that 
he should have " taken a beating so unresistingly from 
the friend of Lord Fellamar," and even hints that the 
passage is an interpolation, although he wisely refrains 
from suggesting by whom, and should have known that 
it was in the first edition. With all deference to so emi- 
nent an authority, it is impossible to share his hesitation. 
Fielding was fully aware that even the bravest have their 
fits of panic. It must besides be remembered that Lord 
Fellamar's friend was not an effeminate dandy, but a mili- 
tary man — probably a professed sabreur, if not a salaried 
bully like Captain Stab, i*n the Rake's Progress ; that he 
was armed with a stick, and Western was not ; and that 
he fell upon him in the most unexpected manner, in a 
place where he was wholly out of his element. It is in- 
conceivable that the sturdy squire, with his faculty for dis- 
tributing "Flicks" and "Dowses" — who came so valiant- 
ly to the aid of Jones in his battle-royal with Blifil and 
Thwackum — was likely, under any but very exceptional 
circumstances, to be dismayed by a cane. It was the ex- 
ceptional character of the assault which made a coward of 
him ; and Fielding, who had the keenest eye for inconsist- 
encies of the kind, knew perfectly well what he was doing. 
Of the remaining dramatis personce — the swarming in- 
dividualities with which the great comic epic is literally 
" all alive," as Lord Monboddo said — it is impossible to 



v.] "TOM JONES." 123 

give any adequate account. Few of them, if any, are open 
to the objection already pointed out with respect to All- 
worthy and the younger Blifil, and most of them bear signs 
of having been closely copied from living models. Par- 
son Thwackum, with his Antinomian doctrines, his big- 
otry, and his pedagogic notions of justice ; Square, the 
philosopher, with his faith in human virtue (alas! poor 
Square), and his cuckoo-cry about " the unalterable Rule 
of Right and the eternal Fitness of Things ;" Partridge — 
the unapproachable Partridge — with his superstition, his 
vanity, and his perpetual Infandum regina, but who, not- 
withstanding all his cheap Latinity, cannot construe an 
unexpected phrase of Horace ; Ensign Northerton, with his 
vague and disrespectful recollections of " Homo ;" young- 
Nightingale and Parson Supple — each is a definite char- 
acter bearing upon his forehead the mark of his absolute 
fidelity to human nature. Nor are the female actors less 
accurately conceived. Starched Miss Bridget Allworthy, 
with her pinched Hogarthian face; Miss Western, with 
her disjointed diplomatic jargon ; that budding Slipslop, 
Mrs. Honour ; worthy Mrs. Miller, Mrs. Fitzpatrick, Mrs. 
Waters, Lady Bellaston — all are to the full as real. Lady 
Bellaston especially, deserves more than a word. Like 
Lady Booby, in Joseph Andrews, she is not a pleasant char- 
acter; but the picture of the fashionable demirep, cynical, 
sensual, and imperious, has never been drawn more vigor- 
ously or more completely-— even by Balzac. Lastly, there 
is the adorable Sophia herself, whose pardon should be 
asked for naming her in such close proximity to her frailer 
sister. Byron calls her (perhaps with a slight suspicion of 
exigence of rhyme) too " emphatic ;" meaning, apparently, 
to refer to such passages as her conversation with Mrs. 
Fitzpatrick, etc. But the heroine of Fielding's time — a 



124 FIELDING. [chap. 

time which made merry over a lady's misadventures in 
horsemanship, and subjected her to such atrocities as those 
of Lord Fellamar — required to be strongly moulded ; and 
Sophia Western is pure and womanly, in spite of her un- 
favourable surroundings. She is a charming example — 
the first of her race — of an unsentimentalised flesh-and- 
Uood heroine ; and Time has bated no jot of her frank 
vitality or her healthy beauty. Her descendants in the 
modern novel are far more numerous than the family which 
she bore to the fortunate — the too fortunate — Mr. Jones. 

And this reminds us that in the foregoing enumeration 
we have left out Hamlet. In truth, it is by no means easy 
to speak of this handsome but very unheroic hero. Lady 
Mary, employing, curiously enough, the very phrase which 
Fielding has made one of his characters apply to Jones, 
goes so far as to call him a " sorry scoundrel ;" and emi- 
nent critics have dilated upon his fondness for drink and 
play. But it is a notable instance of the way in which 
preconceived attributes are gradually attached to certain 
characters, that there is in reality little or nothing to show 
that he was either sot or gamester. With one exception, 
when, in the joy of his heart at his benefactor's recovery, 
he takes too much wine (and it may be noted that on the 
same occasion the Catonic Thwackum drinks considerably 
more), there is no evidence that he was specially given to 
tippling, even in an age of hard drinkers, while of his gam- 
bling there is absolutely no trace at all. On the other 
hand, he is admittedly brave, generous, chivalrous, kind 
to the poor, and courteous to women. What, then, is his 
cardinal defect? The answer lies in the fact that Field- 
ing, following the doctrine laid down in his initial chap- 
ters, has depicted him under certain conditions (in which, 
it is material to note, he is always rather the tempted than 



v.] "TOM JONES." 125 

the tempter), with an unvarnished truthfulness which to 
the pure-minded is repugnant, and to the prurient inde- 
cent. Remembering that he too had been young, and re- 
producing, it may be, his own experiences, he exhibits his 
youth as he had found him — a " piebald miscellany " — 

" Bursts of great heart and slips in sensual mire ;" 

and, to our modern ideas, when no one dares, as Thackeray 
complained, " to depict to his utmost power a Man," the 
spectacle is discomforting. Yet those who look upon hu- 
man nature as keenly and unflinchingly as Fielding did, 
knowing how weak and fallible it is — how prone to fall 
away by accident or passion — can scarcely deny the truth 
of Tom Jones. That such a person cannot properly serve 
as a hero now is rather a question of our time than of 
Fielding's, and it may safely be set aside. One objection 
which has been made, and made with reason, is that Field- 
ing, while taking care that Nemesis shall follow his hero's 
lapses, has spoken of them with too much indulgence, or 
rather without sufficient excuse. Coleridge, who was cer- 
tainly not squeamish, seems to have felt this when, in a 
MS. note 1 in the well-known British Museum edition, he 
says: 

" Even in this most questionable part of Tom Jones [i e, y the Lady 
Bellaston episode, Chap. IX., Book XV.], I cannot but think, after 
frequent reflection on it, that an additional paragraph, more fully 
& forcibly unfolding Tom Jones's sense of self-degradation on the 
discovery of the true character of the relation in which he had stood 

1 These notes were communicated by Mr. James Gillman to The 
Literary Remavis of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, published by H. N. 
Coleridge in 1836. The book in which they were made (it is the 
four volume edition of 1*773, and has Gillman's book-plate) is now 
in the British Museum. The above transcript is from the MR. 



126 FIELDING. [chap. 

to Lady Bellaston— & his awakened feeling of the dignity and man- 
liness of Chastity — would have removed in great measure any just 
objection, at all events relating to Fielding himself, by taking in the 
state of manners in his time." 

Another point suggested by these last lines may be 
touched en passant. Lady Bellaston, as Fielding has care- 
fully explained (Chap. I., Book XIV.), was not a typical, 
but an exceptional, member of society ; aud although there 
were eighteenth-century precedents for such alliances (e. g., 
Miss Edwards and Lord Anne Hamilton, Mrs. Upton and 
General Braddock), it is a question whether in a picture 
of average English life it was necessary to deal with ex- 
ceptions of this kind, or, at all events, to exemplify them 
in the principal personage. But the discussion of this 
subject would prove endless. Right or wrong, Fielding 
has certainly suffered in popularity for his candour in this 
respect, since one of the wisest and wittiest books ever 
written cannot, without hesitation, be now placed in the 
hands of women or very young people. Moreover, this 
same candour has undoubtedly attracted to its pages many, 
neither young nor women, whom its wit finds unintelli- 
gent, and its wisdom leaves unconcerned. 

But what a brave wit it is, what a wisdom after all, that 
is contained in this wonderful novel ! Where shall we 
find its like for richness of reflection — for inexhaustible 
good -humour — for large and liberal humanity? Like 
Fontenelle, Fielding might fairly claim that lie had never 
cast the smallest ridicule upon the most infinitesimal of 
virtues; it is against hypocrisy, affectation, insincerity of 
all kinds, that he wages war. And what a keen and 
searching observation — what a perpetual faculty of sur- 
prise — what an endless variety of method ! Take the 
chapter headed ironically A Recent to regain the lost Affec- 



v.] "Tom jokes;' 127 

tions of a Wife, in which Captain John Blifil gives so strik- 
ing an example of Mr. Samuel Johnson's just published 
Vanity of Human Wishes, by dying suddenly of apoplexy 
while he is considering what he will do with Mr. Allwor- 
thy's property (when it reverts to him) ; or that admirable 
scene, commended by Macaulay, of Partridge at the Play- 
house, which is none the worse because it has just a slight 
look of kinship with that other famous visit which Sir 
Roger de Coverley paid to Philips's Distrest Mother. Or 
take again, as utterly unlike either of these, that burlesque 
Homeric battle in the churchyard, where the " sweetly- 
winding Stour" stands for "reedy Simois,"and the bump- 
kins round for Greeks and Trojans ! Or take yet once 
more, though it is woful work to offer bricks from this 
edifice which has already (in a sense) outlived the Escorial, 1 
the still more diverse passage which depicts the changing 
conflict in Black George's mind as to whether he shall re- 
turn to Jones the sixteen pounds that he has found : 

" Black George having received the Purse, set forward towards the 
Alehouse ; but in the Way a Thought occurred whether he should 
not detain this Money likewise. His Conscience, however, immedi- 
ately started at this Suggestion, and began to upbraid him with In- 
gratitude to his Benefactor. To this his Avarice answered, ' That 
his conscience should have considered that Matter before, when he 
deprived poor Jones of his 500/. That having quietly acquiesced in 
what was of so much greater Importance, it was absurd, if not down- 
right Hypocrisy, to affect any Qualms at this Trifle.' — In return to 
which, Conscience, like a good Lawyer, attempted to distinguish be- 
tween an absolute Breach of Trust, as here where the Goods were 
delivered, and a bare Concealment of what was found, as in the 
former Case. Avarice presently treated this with Ridicule, called 
it a Distinction without a Difference, and absolutely insisted, that 
when once all Pretensions of Honour and Virtue were given up in 

1 The Escorial, it will be remembered, was partially burned in 1872. 



128 FIELDING. [chap. 

any one Instance, that there was no Precedent for resorting to them 
upon a second Occasion. In short, poor Conscience had certainly 
been defeated in the Argument, had not Fear stept in to her As- 
sistance, and very strenuously urged, that the real Distinction be- 
tween the two Actions did not lie in the different degrees of Honour, 
but of Safety : For that the secreting the 5001. was a Matter of very 
little Hazard ; whei-eas the detaining the sixteen Guineas was liable 
to the utmost Danger of Discovery. 

"By this friendly Aid of Fear, Conscience obtained a complete 
Victory in the Mind of Black George, and after making him a few 
Compliments on his Honesty, forced him to deliver the Money to 
Jones." 

When one remembers that this is but one of many such 
passages, and that the book, notwithstanding the indul- 
gence claimed by the author in the Preface, and despite a 
certain hurry at the close, is singularly even in its work- 
manship, it certainly increases our respect for the manly 
genius of the writer, who, amid all the distractions of ill- 
health and poverty, could find the courage to pursue and 
perfect such a conception. It is true that both Cervantes 
and Bunyan wrote their immortal works in the confine- 
ment of a prison. But they must at least have enjoyed 
the seclusion so needful to literary labour; while Tom 
Jones was written here and there, at all times and in all 
places, with the dun at the door and the wolf not very far 
from the gate. 1 

The little sentence quoted some pages back from Wal- 
pole's letters is sufficient proof, if proof were needed, of 
its immediate success. Andrew Millar was shrewd enough, 
despite his constitutional confusion, and he is not likely to 

1 Salisbury, in the neighbourhood of which Tom Jones is laid, 
claims the originals of sorfie of the characters. Thwackum is said 
to have been Hele, a schoolmaster ; Square, one Chubb, a deist ; 
and Dowling, the lawyer, a person named Stillingfleet. 



v.] "TOM JONES." 129 

have given an additional £100 to the author of any book 
without good reason. But the indications of that success 
are not very plainly impressed upon the public prints. 
The Gentleman's Magazine for 1749, which, as might be 
expected from Johnson's connection with it, contains am- 
ple accounts of his own tragedy of Irene and Richardson's 
recently-published Clarissa, has no notice of Tom Jones, 
nor is there even any advertisement of the second edition 
issued in the same year. But, in the emblematic frontis- 
piece, it appears under Clarissa (and sharing with that 
work a possibly unintended proximity to a sprig of laurel 
stuck in a bottle of Nantes), amongst a pile of the books 
of the year ; and in the " poetical essays " for August one 
Thomas Cawthorn breaks into rhymed panegyric. " Sick 
of her fools," sings this enthusiastic but scarcely lucid ad- 
mirer — 

" Sick of her fools, great Nature broke the jest, 
And Truth held out each character to test, 
When Genius spoke : Let Fielding take the pen J 
Life dropt her mask, and all mankind were men." 

There were others, however, who would scarcely have 
echoed the laudatory sentiments of Mr. Cawthorn. 
Amongst these was again the excellent Richardson, who 
seems to have been wholly unpropitiated by the olive 
branch held out to him in the Jacobite's Journal. His 
vexation at the indignity put upon Pamela by Joseph An- 
drews was now complicated by a twittering jealousy of the 
" spurious brat," as he obligingly called Tom Jones, whose 
success had been so " unaccountable." In these circum- 
stances, some of the letters of his correspondents must 
have been gall and* wormwood to him. Lady Bradshaigh, 
for instance, under her nom de plume of " Belfour," tells 
him that she is fatigued with the very name of the book, 
6* 



130 F1ELDIXG. [chap. 

having mot several young ladies who were for ever talking 
of their Tom Jones's, "for so they call their favourites," 
and that the gentlemen, on their side, had their Sophias, 
one having gone so far as to give that all-popular name to 
his "Dutch mastiff puppy." But perhaps the best and 
freshest exhibition (for, as far as can be ascertained, it has 
never hitherto been made public) of Richardson's attitude 
to his rival is to be found in a little group of letters in the 
Forster collection at South Kensington. The writers are 
Aaron Hill and his daughters ; but the letters do not seem 
to have been known to Mrs. Barbauld, whose last commu- 
nication from Hill is dated November 2, 1748. Nor are 
they to be found in Hill's ow r n correspondence. The la- 
dies, it appears, had visited Richardson at Salisbury Court 
in 1741, and were great admirers of Pamela and the "di- 
vine Clarissa." Some months after Tom Jones was pub- 
lished, Richardson (not yet having brought himself to read 
the book) had asked them to do so, and give him their 
opinion as to its merits. Thereupon Minerva and Astrsea, 
who, despite their names, and their description of them- 
selves as " Girls of an untittering Disposition," must have 
been very bright and lively young persons, began seriously 
" to lay their two wise heads together " and " hazard this 
Discovery of their Emptiness." Having " with much ado 
got over some Reluctance, that was bred by a familiar 
coarseness in the Title" they report " much (masqu'd) 
merit " in the " whole six volumes " — " a double merit, 
both of Head, and Heart." Had it been the latter only 
it would be more worthy of Mr. Richardson's perusal ; but, 
say these considerate pioneers, if he does spare it his atten- 
tion, he must only do so at his leisure, for the author " in- 
troduces All his Sections (and too often interweaves the 
serious Body of his meanings), with long Runs of banter- 



v.] "TOM JONES." 131 

ing Levity, which his [Fielding's] Good sense may suffer 
by Effect of." " It is true (they continue), he seems to 
wear this Lightness, as a grave Head sometime wears a 
Feather : which tho' He and Fashion may consider as an 
ornament, Reflection will condemn, as a Disguise, and cov- 
ering.'''' Then follows a brief excursus, intended for their 
correspondent's special consolation, upon the folly of treat- 
ing grave things lightly ; and wkh delightful sententious- 
ness the letter thus concludes : 

" Mean while, 4t is an honest pleasure, which we take in adding, 
that (exclusive of one wild, detach'd, and independent Story of a 
Man of the Hill, that neither brings on Anything, nor rose from 
Anything that went before it) All the changefull windings of the 
Author's Fancy carry on a course of regular Design ; and end in an 
extremely moving Close, where Lives that seem'd to wander and run 
different ways, meet, All, in an instructive Center. 

" The whole Piece consists of an inventive Race of Disapointments 
and Recoveries. It excites Curiosity, and holds it watchful. It has 
just and pointed Satire ; but it is a partial Satire, and confin'd, too 
narrowly : It sacrifices to Authority, and Interest. Its Events reward 
Sincerity, and punish and expose Hypocrisy ; shew Pity and Benevo- 
lence in amiable Lights, and Avarice and Brutality in very despica- 
ble ones. In every Part It has Humanity for its Intention : In too 
many, it seems wantoner than It was meant to be : It has bold shock- 
ing Pictures ; and (I fear) ] not unresembling ones, in high Life, and 
in low. And (to conclude this too adventurous Guess-work, from a 
Pair of forward Baggages) woud, every where, (we think,) deserve 
to please, — if stript of what the Author thought himself most sure 
to please by. 

"And thus, Sir, we have told you our sincere opinion of Tom 
Jones. . . . 

" Your most profest Admirers and most humble Servants, 

" ASTRiEA 

and ]■ Hill. 
Minerva 
"Plaistow the 21th of July 174 9." 

1 The " pen-holder " is the fair Astrsea. 



132 FIELDING. [chap. 

Richardson's reply to this ingenuous criticism is dated 
the 4th of August. His requesting two young women to 
study and criticise a book which he has heard strongly 
condemned as immoral — his own obvious familiarity with 
what he has not read but does not scruple to censure — his 
transparently jealous anticipation of its author's ability — 
all this forms a picture so characteristic alike of the man 
and the time, that no apology is needed for the following 
textual extract : 

"I must confess, that I have been prejudiced by .the Opinion of 
Several judicious Friends against the truly coarse-titled Tom Jones; 
and so have been discouraged from reading it. — I was told, that it 
was a rambling Collection of Waking Dreams, in which Probability 
was not observed : And that it had a very bad Tendency. And I 
had Reason to think that the Author intended for his Second View 
(His first, to fill his Pocket, by accommodating it to the reigning 
Taste) in writing it, to whiten a vicious Character, and to make 
Morality bend to his Practices. What Reason had he to make his 
Tom illegitimate, in an Age where Keeping is become a Fashion ? 
Why did he make him a common — What shall I call it ? And a 
Kept Fellow, the Lowest of all Fellows, yet in Love with a Young 
Creature who was traping [trapesing?] after him, a Fugitive from 
her Father's House? — Why did he draw his Heroine so fond, so 
foolish, and so insipid ? — Indeed he has one excuse — He knows not 
how to draw a delicate Woman— He has not been accustomed to 
such Company, — And is too prescribing, too impetuous, too immoral, 
I will venture to say, to take any other Byass than that a perverse 
and crooked Nature has given him ; or Evil Habits, at least, have 
confirm 1 d in him. Do Men expect Grapes of Thorns, or Figs of 
Thistles ? But, perhaps, I think the worse of the Piece because I 
know the Writer, and dislike his Principles both Public and Private, 
tho' I wish well to the Man, and Love Four worthy Sisters of his, 1 
with whom I am well acquainted. And indeed should admire him, 
did he make the Use of his Talents which I wish him to make, For 

1 From this it would seem that General Fielding had some daugh- 
ters of whom no record has been preserved. 



v.] "TOM JONES." 133 

the Vein of Humour, and Ridicule, which he is Master of, might, if 
properly turned, do great Service to y e Cause of Virtue. 

" But no more of this Gentleman's Work, after I have said, That 
the favourable Things, you say of the Piece, will tempt me, if I can 
find Leisure, to give it a Perusal." 

Notwithstanding this last sentence, Richardson more 
than once reverts to Tom Jones before he finishes his let- 
ter. Its effect upon Minerva and Astrsea is best described 
in an extract from Aaron Hill's reply, dated seven days 
later (August the 11th): 

" Unfortunate Tom Jones ! how sadly has he mortify'd Two sawcy 
Correspondents of your making ! They are with me now : and bid 
me tell you, You have spoil'd 'em Both, for Criticks. — Shall I add, 
a Secret which they did not bid me tell you ? — They, Both, fairly 
cry'd, that You shou'd think it possible they cou'd approve of Any 
thing, in Any work, that had an Evil Tendency, in any Part or Pur- 
pose of it. They maintain their Point so far, however, as to be 
convinc'd they say, that you will disapprove this over-rigid Judgment 
of those Friends, who cou'd not find a Thread of Moral Meaning in 
Tom Jones, quite independent of the Levities they justly censure. — 
And, as soon as you have Time to read him, for yourself, tis there, 
pert Sluts, they will be bold enough to rest the Matter. — Mean while, 
they love and honour you and your opinions." 

• 

To this the author of Clarissa replied by writing a long- 
epistle deploring the pain he had given the " dear Ladies," 
and minutely justifying his foregone conclusions from the 
expressions they had used. He refers to Fielding again 
as " a very indelicate, a very impetuous, an unyielding- 
spirited Man ;" and he also trusts to be able to " bestow a 
Reading" on Tom Jones ; but by a letter from Lady Brad- 
shaigh, printed in Barbauld, and dated December, 1749, it 
seems that even at that date he had not, or pretended he 
had not, yet done so. In another of the unpublished 
South Kensington letters, from a Mr. Solomon Lowe, oc- 



134 FIELDING. [chap. 

curs the following : " I do not doubt " — says the writer 
— "but all Europe will ring of it [Clarissa]: when a 
Cracker, that was some thous d hours a-composing, 1 will no 
longer be heard, or talkt-of." Richardson, with business- 
like precision, has gravely docketed this in his own hand- 
writing — " Cracker, T. Jones." 

It is unfortunate for Mr. Lowe's reputation as a prophet 
that, after more than one hundred and thirty years, this 
ephemeral firework, as he deemed it, should still be spark- 
ling with undiminished brilliancy, and, to judge by recent 
editions, is selling as vigorously as ever. From the days 
when Lady Mary wrote u Ne ])lus ultra" in her own copy, 
and La Harpe called it le premier roman du monde (a 
phrase which, by the way, De Musset applies to Clarissa), 
it has come down to us with an almost universal accom- 
paniment of praise. Gibbon, Byron, Coleridge, Scott, 
Dickens, Thackeray, have all left their admiration on rec- 
ord — to say nothing of professional critics innumerable. 
As may be seen from the British Museum Catalogue, it 
has been translated into French, German, Polish, Dutch, 
and Spanish. Russia and Sweden have also their versions. 
The first French translation,»or rather abridgment, by M. 
de La Place was prohibited in France (to Richardson's de- 
light) by royal decree, an act which affords another in- 
stance, in Scott's words, of that " French delicacy, which, 
on so many occasions, has strained at a gnat, and swal- 
lowed a camel " (e. g., the novels of M. Crebillon Jils). La 
Place's edition (1750) was gracefully illustrated with six- 
teen plates by Hubert Bourguignon, called Gravelot, one 
of those eighteenth-century illustrators whose designs at 
present are the rage in Paris. In England, Fielding's best- 
known pictorial interpreters are Rowlandson and Crnik- 

1 Vide Tom Jones, feook XL, Chap. L 



v.J "TOM JONES." 135 

shank, the latter being by far the more sympathetic. 
Stothard also prepared some designs for Harrison's Novel- 
ist's Magazine; but his refined and effeminate pencil was 
scarcely strong enough for the task. Hogarth alone could 
have been the ideal illustrator of Henry Fielding; that is 
to say, if, in lieu of the rude designs he made for Tris- 
tram Shandy, he could have been induced to undertake 
the work in the larger fashion of the Rake's Progress or 
the Marriage a la Mode. 

As might perhaps be anticipated, Tom Jones attracted 
the dramatist. 1 In 1765 one J. H. Steffens made a com- 
edy of it for the German boards; and in 1785 a M. Des- 
forges based upon it another, called Tom Jones a Lon- 
dres, which was acted at the Theatre Frafigais. It was 
also turned into a comic opera by Joseph Reed in 1769, 
and played at Covent Garden. But its most piquant 
transformation is the Comedie lyrique of Poinsinet, acted 
at Paris in 1765-6 to the lively music of Philidor. The 
famous Caillot took the part of Squire Western, who, sur- 
rounded by piqueurs, and girt with the conventional cor de 
chasse of the Gallic sportsman, sings the following ariette, 
diversified with true Fontainebleau terms of venery : 

" D'un Cerf, dix Cors, j'ai connaissance : 
On l'attaque au fort, on le Jance ; 
Tous sont prets : 
Piqueurs & Valets 
Suivent les pas de l'ami Jone (sic). 
J'entends crier : Volcelets, Volcelets. 

1 It may be added that it also attracted the plagiarist. As Pamela 
had its sequel in Pamela's Conduct in High Life, 1741, so Tom Jones 
was continued in The History of Tom Jones the Foundling, in his 
Married State, a second edition of which was issued in 1750. The 
Preface announces, needlessly enough, that " Henry Fielding, Esq., is 
not the Author of this Book." It deserves no serious consideration. 
K 



136 FIELDING. [chap. v. 

Aussitot j'ordonne 

Que la Meute donne. 

Tayaut, Tayaut, Tayaut. 
Mes chiens decouples l'environnent ; 

Les trompes sonnent : 
1 Courage, Amis : Tayaut, Tayaut.' 
Quelques chiens, que l'ardeur derange, 
Quittent la voye & prennent le change. 

Jones les rassure d'un cri : 

Ourvari, ourvari. 

Accoute, accoute, accoute. 

Au retour nous en revoyons. 

Accoute, a Mirmiraut, courons ; 

Tout a Griffaut ; 

Y apres : Tayaut, Tayaut. 

On reprend route, 

Voila le Cerf a l'eau. 

La trompe sonne, 

La Meute donne, 

L'echo resonne, 
Nous pressons les nouveaux relais : 

Volcelets, Volcelets. 

L'animal force succombe, 
Fait un effort, se releve, enfin torabe : 
Et nos chasseurs chantent tous a l'envi : 
* Amis, goutons les fruits de la victoire ; 
Amis, Amis, celebrons notre gloire. 

Halali, Fanfare, Halali 
Halali.' " 

With this triumphant flourish of trumpets the present 
chapter may be fittingly concluded. 



CHAPTER VI. 



In one of Horace Walpole's letters to George Montagu, 
already quoted, there is a description of Fielding's Bow 
Street establishment, which has attracted more attention 
than it deserves. The letter is dated May the 18th, 1749, 
and the passage (in Cunningham's edition) runs as fol- 
lows: 

"He [Rigby] and Peter Bathurst 1 t'other night carried a servant 
of the latter's, who had attempted to shoot him, before Fielding ; 
who, to all his other vocations, has, by the grace of Mr. Lyttelton, 
added that of Middlesex justice. He sent them word he was at 
supper, that they must come next morning. They did not understand 
that freedom, and ran up, where they found him banqueting with a 
blind man, a whore, and three Irishmen, on some cold mutton and a 
bone of ham, both in one dish, and the dirtiest cloth. He never 
stirred nor asked them to sit. Rigby, who had seen him so ofter 
come to beg a guinea of Sir C. Williams, and Bathurst, at whose 
father's he had lived for victuals, understood that dignity as little, 
and pulled themselves chairs ; on which he civilised." 

1 Bathurst was M.P. for New Sarum, and brother of Pope's friend, 
Allen, Lord Bathurst. Rigby was the Richard Rigby whose despica- 
ble character is familiar in Eighteenth-Century Memoirs. " He died 
(says Cunningham) involved in debt, with his accounts as Paymaster 
of the Forces hopelessly unsettled." 



138 FIELDING. [chap. 

Scott calls this " a humiliating anecdote ;" and both Mr. 
Lawrence and Mr. Keightley have exhausted rhetoric in the 
effort to explain it away. As told, it is certainly uncom- 
plimentary ; but considerable deductions must be made, 
both for the attitude of the narrator and the occasion of 
the narrative. Walpole's championship of his friends was 
notorious ; and his absolute injustice, when his partisan 
spirit was uppermost, is everywhere patent to the readers 
of his Letters. In the present case he was not of the en- 
croaching party ; and he speaks from hearsay solely. But 
his friends had, in his opinion, been outraged by a man 
who, according to his ideas of fitness, should have come to 
them cap in hand ; and, as a natural consequence, the story, 
no doubt exaggerated when it reached him, loses nothing 
under his transforming and malicious pen. Stripped of 
its decorative flippancy, however, there remains but lit- 
tle that can really be regarded as " humiliating." Scott 
himself suggests, what is most unquestionably the case, 
that the blind man was the novelist's half-brother, after- 
wards Sir John Fielding ; and it is extremely unlikely that 
the lady so discourteously characterised could have been 
any other than his wife, who, Lady Stuart tells us, " had 
few personal charms." There remain the " three Irishmen," 
who may, or may not, have been perfectly presentable mem- 
bers of society. At all events, their mere nationality, so 
rapidly decided upon, cannot be regarded as a stigma. 
That the company and entertainment were scarcely calcu- 
lated to suit the superfine standard of Mr. Bathurst and 
Mr. Rigby may perhaps be conceded. Fielding was by no 
means a rich man, and in his chequered career had possi- 
bly grown indifferent to minor decencies. Moreover, we are 
told by Murphy that, as a Westminster justice, he "kept 
his table open to those who had been his friends when 



vi.] JUSTICE LIFE- 139 

young, and had impaired their own fortunes." Thus, it 
must always have been a more or less ragged regiment 
who met about that kindly Bow Street board ; but that 
the fact reflects upon either the host or guests cannot be 
admitted for a moment. If the anecdote is discreditable 
to anyone, it is to that facile retailer of ana and incorrigi- 
ble society-gossip, Mr. Horace Walpole. 

But while these unflattering tales were told of his private 
life, Fielding was fast becoming eminent in his public ca- 
pacity. On the 12th of May, 1749, he was unanimously 
chosen chairman of Quarter Sessions at Hicks's Hall (as the 
Clerkenwell Sessions House was then called) ; and on the 
29th of June following he delivered a charge to the West- 
minster Grand Jury, which is usually printed with his 
works, and which is still regarded by lawyers as a model 
exposition. It is at first a little unexpected to read his 
impressive and earnest denunciations of masquerades and 
theatres (in which latter, by the way, one Samuel Foote 
had very recently been following the example of the au- 
thor of Pasquin) ; but Fielding the magistrate and Field- 
ing the playwright were two different persons; and a long 
interval of changeful experience lay between them. In an- 
other part of his charge, which deals with the offence of 
libelling, it is possible that his very vigorous appeal was 
not the less forcible by reason of the personal attacks to 
which he had referred in the Preface to David Simple, the 
Jacobite's Journal, and elsewhere. His only other literary 
efforts during this year appear to have been a little pam- 
phlet entitled A True State of the Case of Bosavern Pen- 
lez ; and a formal congratulatory letter to Lyttelton upon 
his second marriage, in which, while speaking gratefully of 
his own obligations to his friend, he endeavours to enlist 
his sympathies for Moore the fabulist, who was also " about 



140 FIELDING. [chap. 

to marry." The pamphlet had reference to an occurrence 
which took place in July. Three sailors of the Grafton 
man-of-war had been robbed in a house of ill fame in the 
Strand. Failing to obtain redress, they attacked the house 
with their comrades, and wrecked it, causing a " dangerous 
riot," to which Fielding makes incidental reference in one 
of his letters to the Duke of Bedford, and which was wit- 
nessed by John Byrom, the poet and stenographer, in 
whose Remains it is described. Bosavern Penlez, or Pen 
Lez, who had joined the crowd, and in whose possession 
some of the stolen property was found, was tried and 
hanged in September. His sentence, which was consider- 
ed extremely severe, excited much controversy, and the 
object of Fielding's pamphlet was to vindicate the justice 
and necessity of his conviction. 

Towards the close of 1749 Fielding fell seriously ill 
with fever aggravated by gout. It was indeed at one time 
reported that mortification had supervened ; but under the 
care of Dr. Thomson, that dubious practitioner whose treat- 
ment of Winnington in 1746 had given rise to so much 
paper war, he recovered; and during 1750 was actively 
employed in his magisterial duties. At this period law- 
lessness and violence appear to have prevailed to an un- 
usual extent in the metropolis, and the office of a Bow 
Street justice was no sinecure. Reform of some kind was 
felt on all sides to be urgently required; and Fielding 
threw r his two years' experience and his deductions there- 
from into the form of a pamphlet entitled An Enquiry 
into the Causes of the late Increase of Robbers, etc., with 
some Proposals for remedying this growing Evil. It was 
dedicated to the then Lord High Chancellor, Philip Yorke, 
Lord Hardwicke, by whom, as well as by more recent legal 
authorities, it was highly appreciated. Like the Charge to 



vij JUSTICE LIFE. l4i 

the Grand Jury, it is a grave argumentative document, 
dealing seriously with luxury, drunkenness, gaming, and 
other prevalent vices. Once only, in an ironical passage 
respecting beaus and fine ladies, does the author remind 
us of the author of Tom Jones. As a rule, he is weighty, 
practical, and learned in the law. Against the curse of 
gin-drinking, which, owing to the facilities for obtaining 
that liquor, had increased to an alarming extent among the 
poorer classes, he is especially urgent and energetic. He 
points out that it is not only making dreadful havoc in 
the present, but that it is enfeebling the race of the future, 
and he concludes : 

" Some little Care on this Head is surely necessary : For tho' the 
Encrease of Thieves, and the Destruction of Morality ; though the 
Loss of our Labourers, our Sailors, and our Soldiers, should not be 
sufficient Reasons, there is one which seems to be unanswerable, and 
that is, the Loss of our Gin-drinkers : Since, should the drinking this 
Poison be continued in its present Height during the next twenty 
Years, there will, by that Time, be very few of the common People 
left to drink it." 

To the appeal thus made by Fielding in January, 1751, 
Hogarth added his pictorial protest in the following month 
by his awful plate of Gin Lane, which, if not actually 
prompted by his friend's words, was certainly inspired by 
the same crying evil. One good result of these efforts was 
the " Bill for restricting the Sale of Spirituous Liquors," 
to which the royal assent was given in June, and Fielding's 
connection with this enactment is practically acknowledged 
by Horace Walpole in his Memoirs of the Last Ten Years 
of the Reign of George II. The law was not wholly 
effectual, and was difficult to enforce ; but it was not by 
any means without its good effects. 1 

1 The Rev. R. Hurd, afterwards Bishop of Worcester, an upright 



142 FIELDING. [chap. 

Between the publication of the Enquiry and that of 
Amelia there is nothing of importance to chronicle except 
Fieldino-'s connection with one of the events of 1751, the 
discovery of the Glastonbury waters. According to the 
account given in the Gentleman's for July in that year, a 
certain Matthew Chancellor had been cured of " an asthma 
and phthisic" of thirty years' standing by drinking from 
a spring near Chain Gate, Glastonbury, to which he had 
(so he alleged) been directed in a dream. The spring 
forthwith became famous; and in May an entry in the 
" Historical Chronicle " for Sunday, the 5th, records that 
above 10,000 persons had visited it, deserting Bristol^ 
Bath, and other popular resorts. Numerous pamphlets 
were published for and against the new waters; and a 
letter in their favour, which appeared in the London Daily 
Advertiser for the 31st of August, signed "Z, Z.," is " sup- 
posed to be wrote" by " J e F g." Fielding was, as 

may be remembered, a Somersetshire man, Sharpham Park, 
his birthplace, being about three miles from Glastonbury; 
and he testifies to the " wonderful Effects of this salubri- 
ous Spring" in words which show that he had himself 
experienced them. "Having seen great Numbers of my 

and scholarly, but formal and censorious man, whom Johnson called 
a " word - picker," and franker contemporaries " an old maid in 
breeches," has left a reference to Fielding at this time which is not 
flattering : " I dined with him [Ralph Allen] yesterday, where I met 
Mr. Fielding, — a poor emaciated, worn-out rake, whose gout and in- 
firmities have got the better even of his buffoonery." (Letter to 
Balguy, dated "Inner Temple, 19th March, 1751.") That Fielding 
had not long before been dangerously ill, and that he was a martyr 
to gout, is fact: the rest is probably no more than the echo of a 
foregone conclusion, based upon report, or dislike to his works. 
Hurd praised Richardson and proscribed Sterne. He must have 
been wholly out of sympathy with the author of Torn Jones. 



vi.] "AMELIA." 143 

Fellow Creatures under two of the most miserable Diseases 
human Nature can labour under, the Asthma and Evil, re- 
turn from Glastonbury blessed with the Return of Health, 
and having myself been relieved from a Disorder which 
baffled the most skilful Physicians," justice to mankind 
(he says) obliges him to take notice of the subject. The 
letter is interesting, more as showing that, at this time, 
Fielding's health was broken, than as proving the efficacy 
of the cure ; for, whatever temporary relief the waters af- 
forded, it is clear (as Mr. Lawrence pertinently remarks) 
that he derived no permanent benefit from them. They 
must, however, have continued to attract visitors, as a 
pump-room was opened in August, 1753; and, although 
they have now fallen into disuse, they were popular for 
many years. 

But a more important occurrence than the discovery 
of the Somersetshire spring is a little announcement con- 
tained in Sylvanus Urban's list of publications for Decern 
ber, 1751, No. 17 of which is "Amelia, in 4 books, 12 mo; 
by Henry Fielding, Esq." The publisher, of course, was 
Andrew Millar ; and the actual day of issue, as appears 
from the General Advertiser, was December the 19th # 
although the title-page, by anticipation, bore the date of 
1752. There were two mottoes, one of which was the 
appropriate — 

" Felices ter & amplins 
Quos irrupta tenet Copula;" 

and the dedication, brief and simply expressed, was to 
Ralph Allen. As before, the " artful aid " of advertise- 
ment was invoked to whet the public appetite: 

" To satisfy the earnest Demand of the Publiek (says Millar), this 
Work has been printed at four Presses ; but the Proprietor notwith- 



144 FIELDING. [chap. 

standing finds it impossible to get them (sic) bound in Time, without 
spoiling the Beauty of the Impression, and therefore will sell them 
sew'd at Half-a-Guinea." 

This was open enough ; but, according to Scott, Millar 
adopted a second expedient to assist Am,elia with the 
booksellers : 

"He had paid a thousand pounds for' the copyright; and when he 
began to suspect that the work would be judged inferior to its pred- 
ecessor, he employed the following stratagem to push it upon the 
trade. At a sale made to the booksellers, previous to the publica- 
tion, Millar offered his friends his other publications on the usual 
terms of discount'; but when he came to Amelia, he laid it aside, as 
a work expected to be in such demand, that he could not afford to 
deliver it to the trade in the usual manner. The nise succeeded — 
the impression was anxiously bought up, and the bookseller re- 
lieved from every apprehension of a slow sale." 

There were several reasons why — superficially speaking 
— Amelia should be "judged inferior to its predecessor." 
That it succeeded Tom Jones after an interval of little 
more than two years and eight months would be an im- 
portant element in the comparison, if it were known at 
all definitely what period was occupied in writing Tom 
Jones. All that can be affirmed is that Fielding must have 
been far more at leisure when he composed the earlier 
work than he could possibly have been when filling the 
office of a Bow Street magistrate. But, in reality J there is 
a much better explanation of the superiority of Tom Jones 
to Amelia than the merely empirical one of the time it 
took. Tom Jones, it has been admirably said by a French 
critic, " est la condensation et le resume de toute une exist- 
ence. Cest le resultat et la conclusion de plusieurs annees 
de passions et de pensees, laformule derniere et complete de 
la philosophie personnelle que Von s'est faite sur tout ce que 



vr.] "AMELIA." 145 

Von a vu et senti" Such an experiment, argues Planche, 
is not twice repeated in a lifetime : the soil which pro- 
duced so rich a crop can but yield a poorer aftermath. 
Behind Tom Jones there was the author's ebullient youth 
and manhood ; behind Amelia but a section of his graver 
middle-age. There are other reasons for diversity in the 
manner of the book itself. The absence of the initial 
chapters, which gave so much variety to Tom Jones, tends 
to heighten the sense of impatience which, it must be 
confessed, occasionally creeps over the reader of Amelia, 
especially in those parts where, like Dickens at a later 
period, Fielding delays the progress of his narrative for 
the discussion of social problems and popular grievances. 
However laudable the desire (expressed in the dedication) 
" to expose some of the most glaring Evils, as well public 
as private, which at present infest this Country," the re- 
sult in Amelia, from an art point of view, is as unsatisfac- 
tory as that of certain well-known pages of Bleak House 
and Little Dorrit. Again, there is a marked change in 
the attitude of the author — a change not wholly reconcila- 
ble with the brief period which separates the two novels. 
However it may have chanced, whether from failing health 
or otherwise, the Fielding of Amelia is suddenly a far 
older man than the Fielding of Tom Jones. The robust 
and irrepressible vitality, the full-veined delight of living, 
the energy of observation and strength of satire, which 
characterise the one give place in the other to a calmer 
retrospection, a more compassionate humanity, a gentler 
and more benignant criticism of life. That, as some have 
contended, Amelia shows an intellectual falling-ofE cannot 
for a moment be admitted, least of all upon the ground — 
as even so staunch an admirer as Mr. Keightley has allow- 
ed himself to believe — that certain of its incidents are ob- 
7 



146 FIELDING. [chap. 

viously repeated from the Modern Husband and others of 
the author's plays. At this rate Tom Jones might be 
judged inferior to Joseph Andrews, because the Political 
Apothecary in the " Man of the Hill's " story has his 
prototype in the Coffee-House Politician, whose original 
is Addison's Upholsterer. The plain fact is, that Fielding 
recognised the failure of his plays as literature ; he re- 
garded them as dead; and freely transplanted what was 
good of his forgotten work into the work which he hoped 
would live. In this, it may be, there was something of 
indolence or haste ; but assuredly there was no proof of 
declining powers. 

If, for the sake of comparison, Tom Jones may be de- 
scribed as an animated and happily-constructed comedy, 
with more than the usual allowance of first-rate charac- 
ters, Amelia must be regarded as a one -part piece, in 
which the rest of the dramatis j^rsonoe are wholly sub- 
ordinate to the central figure. Captain Booth, the two 
Colonels, Atkinson and his wife, Miss Matthews, Dr. Har- 
rison, Trent, the shadowy and maleficent " My Lord," are 
all less active on their own account than energised and 
set in motion by Amelia. Round her they revolve ; from 
her tl^ey obtain their impulse and their orbit. The best 
of the men, as studies, are Dr. Harrison and Colonel Bath. 
The former, who is as benevolent as All worthy, is far more 
human, and, it may be added, more humorous in well- 
doing. He is an individual rather than an abstraction. 
Bath, with his dignity and gun-cotton honour, is also ad- 
mirable, but not entirely free from the objection made to 
some of Dickens's creations, that they are rather charac- 
teristics than characters. Captain William Booth, beyond 
his truth to nature, manifests no qualities that can com- 
pensate for his weakness, and the best that can be said of 



vi.] "AMELIA." 147 

him is that, without it, his wife would have had no oppor- 
tunity for the display of her magnanimity. There is also 
a certain want of consistency in his presentment; and 
when, in the residence of Mr. Bondum, the bailiff, he sud- 
denly develops an unexpected scholarship, it is impossible 
not to suspect that Fielding was unwilling to lose the op- 
portunity of preserving some neglected scenes of the Au- 
thor's Farce. Miss Matthews is a new and remarkable 
study of the femme entretenue, to parallel which, as in the 
case of Lady Bellaston, we must go to Balzac ; Mrs. James, 
again, is an excellent example of that vapid and colourless 
nonentity, the "person of condition." Mrs. Bennet, al- 
though apparently more contradictory and less intelligible, 
is nevertheless true to her past history and present en- 
vironments ; while her husband, the sergeant, with his 
concealed and reverential love for his beautiful foster-sis- 
ter, has had a long line of descendants in the modern 
novel. It is upon Amelia, however, that the author has 
lavished all his pains, and there is no more touching por- 
trait in the whole of fiction than this heroic and immortal 
one of feminine goodness and forbearance. It is needless 
to repeat that it is painted from Fielding's first wife, or to 
insist that, as Lady Mary was fully persuaded, " several of 
the incidents he mentions are real matters of fact." That 
famous scene where Amelia is spreading, for the recreant 
who is losing his money at the King's Arms, the historic 
little supper of hashed mutton which she has cooked with 
her own hands, and denying herself a glass of white wine 
to save the paltry sum of sixpence, " while her Husband 
was paying a Debt of several Guineas incurred by the Ace 
of Trumps being in the Hands of his Adversary " — a scene 
which it is impossible to read aloud without a certain 
huskiness in the throat — the visits to the pawnbroker and 



148 FIELDING. [chap. 

the sponging-house, the robbery by the little servant, the 
encounter at Vauxhall, and some of the pretty vignettes 
of the children, are no doubt founded on personal recollec- 
tions. Whether the pursuit to which the heroine is ex- 
posed had any foundation in reality it is impossible to 
say ; and there is a passage in Murphy's memoir which 
almost reads as if it had been penned with the express 
purpose of anticipating any too harshly literal identifica- 
tion of Booth with Fielding, since we are told of the 
latter that, " though disposed to gallantry by his strong 
animal spirits, and the vivacity of his passions, he was re- 
markable for tenderness and constancy to his wife [the 
italics are ours], and the strongest affection for his chil- 
dren." These, however, are questions beside the matter, 
which is the conception of Amelia. That remains, and 
must remain forever, in the words of one of Fielding's 
greatest modern successors, a figure 

" Wrought with love . . . 
Nought modish in it, pure and noble lines 
Of generous womanhood that fits all time." 

There are many women who forgive ; but Amelia does 
more — she not only forgives, but she forgets. The pas- 
sage in which she exhibits to her contrite husband the 
letter received long before from Miss Matthews is one of 
the noblest in literature ; and if it had been recorded 
that Fielding — like Thackeray on a memorable occasion — 
had here slapped his fist upon the table and said, " That 
is a stroke of genius!" it would scarcely have been a thing 
to be marvelled at. One final point in connection with 
her may be noted, which has not always been borne in 
mind by those who depict good women — much after 
Hogarth's fashion — without a head. She is not by any 



vi.] "AMELIA." .49 

means a simpleton, and it is misleading to describe her as 
a tender, fluttering little creature, who, because she can 
cook her husband's supper, and caresses him with the 
obsolete name of Billy, must necessarily be contemptible. 
On the contrary, she has plenty of ability and good sense, 
with a fund of humour which enables her to slily enjoy 
and even gently satirise the fine lady airs of Mrs. James. 
Nor is it necessary to contend that her faculties are sub- 
ordinated to her affections; but rather that conjugal 
fidelity and Christian charity are inseparable alike from 
her character and her creed. 

As illustrating the tradition that Fielding depicted 
his first wife in Sophia Western and in Amelia, it has 
been remarked that there is no formal description of her 
personal appearance in his last novel, her portrait having 
already been drawn at length in Tom Jones. But the 
following depreciatory sketch by Mrs. James is worth 
quoting, not only because it indirectly conveys the impres- 
sion of a very handsome woman, but because it is also an 
admirable specimen of Fielding's lighter manner : 

'"In the first place,' cries Mrs. James, 'her eyes are too large; 
and she hath a look with them that I don't know how to describe ; 
but I know I don't like it. Then her eyebrows are too large ; there- 
fore, indeed, she doth all in her power to remedy this with her pin- 
cers; for if it was not for those, her eyebrows would be preposter- 
ous. — Then her nose, as well proportioned as it is, has a visible scar 
on one side. 1 — Her neck likewise is too protuberant for the genteel 
size, especially as she laces herself ; for no woman, in my opinion, 
can be genteel who is not entirely flat before. And lastly, she is 
both too short, and too tall. — Well, you may laugh, Mr. James, I 
know what I mean, though I cannot well express it. I mean, that 
she is too tall for a pretty woman, and too short for a fine woman. 
— There is such a thing as a kind of insipid medium — a kind of 

1 See note on this subject in Chapter IV. 



1 50 FIELDING. [chap. 

something that is neither one thing or another. I know not how 
to express it more clearly ; but when I say such a one is a pretty 
woman, a pretty thing, a pretty creature, you know very well I mean 
a little woman ; and when I say such a one is a very fine woman, 
a very fine person of a woman, to be sure I must mean a tall wom- 
an. Now a woman that is between both, is certainly neither the 
one nor the other." 



The ingenious expedients of Andrew Millar, to which 
reference has been made, appear to have so far succeeded 
that a new edition of Amelia was called for on the day 
of publication. Johnson, to whom we owe this story, was 
thoroughly captivated with the book. Notwithstanding 
that on another occasion he paradoxically asserted that 
the author was " a blockhead " — " a barren rascal " — he 
read it through without stopping, and pronounced Mrs. 
Booth to be "the most pleasing heroine of all the ro- 
mances." Richardson, on the other hand, found "the 
characters and situations so wretchedly low and dirty " that 
he could not get farther than the first volume. With the 
professional reviewers, a certain " Criticulus " in the Gen- 
tleman! 8 excepted, it seems to have fared but ill ; and al- 
though these adverse verdicts, if they exist, are now more 
or less inaccessible, Fielding has apparently summarised 
most of them in a mock-trial of Amelia before the " Court 
of Censorial Enquiry," the proceedings of which are re- 
corded in Nos. 7 and 8 of the Covent- Garden Journal. 
The book is indicted upon the Statute of Dulness, and 
the heroine is charged with being a "low Character," 
a " Milksop" and a " Fool ;" with lack of spirit and faint- 
ing too frequently ; with dressing her children, cooking, 
and other " servile Offices ;" with being too forgiving to 
her husband ; and lastly, as may be expected, with the in- 
consistency, already amply referred to, of being " a Beauty 



vi.] "AMELIA." 151 

zvithout a nosey Dr. Harrison and Colonel Bath are ar- 
raigned much in the same fashion. After some evidence 
against her has been tendered, and " a Great Number of 
Beans, Rakes, fine Ladies, and several formal Persons with 
bushy Wigs, and Canes at their Noses," are preparing to 
supplement it, a grave man steps forward, and, begging 
to be heard, delivers what must be regarded as Fielding's 
final apology for his last novel : 

" If you, Mr. Censor, are yourself a Parent, you will view me with 
Compassion when I declare I am the Father of this poor Girl the 
Prisoner at the Bar; nay, when I go further and avow, that of all 
my Offspring she is my favourite Child. I can truly say that I be- 
stowed a more than ordinary Pains in her Education ; in which I 
venture to affirm, I followed the Rules of all those who are acknowl- 
edged to have writ best on the Subject; and if her Conduct be fairly 
examined, she will be found to deviate very little from the strictest 
Observation of all those Rules ; neither Homer nor Virgil pursued 
them with greater Care than myself, and the candid and learned 
Reader will see that the latter was the noble model which I made 
use of on this Occasion. 

" I do not think my Child is entirely free from Faults. I know 
nothing human that is so ; but surely she doth not deserve the Ran- 
cour with which she hath been treated by the Public. However, it 
is not my Intention, at present, to make any Defence ; but shall sub- 
mit to a Compromise, which hath been always allowed in this Court 
in all Prosecutions for Dulness. I do, therefore, solemnly declare 
to you, Mr. Censor, that I will trouble the World no more with any 
Children of mine by the same Muse." 

Whether sincere or not, this last statement appears to 
have afforded the greatest gratification to Richardson. 
" Will I leave you to Captain Booth ?" he writes trium- 
phantly to Mrs. Donnellan, in answer to a question she had 
put to him. "Captain Booth, Madam, has done his own 
business. Mr. Fielding has over- written himself, or rather 

under-written ; and in his own journal seems ashamed of 
L 



152 FIELDING. [chap. 

his last piece ; and has promised that the same Muse shall 
write no more for him. The piece, in short, is as dead 
as if it had been published forty years ago, as to sale." 
There is much to the same effect in the worthy little 
printer's correspondence ; but enough has been quoted to 
show how intolerable to the super-sentimental creator of 
the high-souled and heroic Clarissa was his rival's plainer 
and more practical picture of matronly virtue and modesty. 
In cases of this kind, parva seges satis est, and Amelia has 
long since outlived both rival malice and contemporary 
coldness. It is a proof of her author's genius that she is 
even more intelligible to our age than she was to her own. 
At the end of the second volume of the first edition of 
her history was a notice announcing the immediate appear- 
ance of the above-mentioned Covent- Garden Journal, a 
biweekly paper, in which Fielding, under the style and 
title of Sir Alexander Drawcansir, assumed the office of 
Censor of Great Britain. The first number of this new 
venture was issued on January the 4th, 1*752, and the 
price was threepence. In plan, and general appearance, it 
resembled the Jacobitis Journal, consisting mainly of an 
introductory Essay, paragraphs of current news, often ac- 
companied by pointed editorial comment, miscellaneous 
articles, and advertisements. One of the features of the 
earlier numbers was a burlesque, but not very successful, 
Journal of the present Paper War, which speedily involved 
the author in actual hostilities with the notorious quack 
and adventurer Dr. John Hill, who for some time had been 
publishing certain impudent lucubrations in the London 
Daily Advertiser under the heading of The Inspector; 
and also with Smollett, whom he (Fielding) had ridiculed 
in his second number, perhaps on account of that little 
paragraph in the first edition of Peregrine Pickle, to which 



vi. J "AMELIA." 153 

reference was made in an earlier chapter. Smollett, always 
irritable and combative, retorted by a needlessly coarse 
and venomous pamphlet, in which, under the name of 
" Habbakkuk Hilding, Justice, Dealer and Chapman," 
Fielding was attacked with indescribable brutality. An- 
other, and seemingly unprovoked, adversary whom the 
Journal of the War brought upon him was Bonnel Thorn- 
ton, afterwards joint-author with George Colman of the 
Connoisseur, who, in a production styled Have at you All ; 
or, The Drury Lane Journal, lampooned Sir Alexander 
with remarkable rancour and assiduity. Mr. Lawrence has 
treated these " quarrels of authors " at some length ; and 
they also have some record in the curious collections of 
the elder Disraeli. As a general rule, Fielding was far 
less personal and much more scrupulous in his choice of 
weapons than those who assailed him ; but the conflict 
was an undignified one, and, as Scott has justly said, 
"neither party would obtain honour by an inquiry into 
the cause or conduct of its hostilities." 

In the enumeration of Fielding's works it is somewhat 
difficult (if due proportion be observed) to assign any real 
importance to efforts like the Covent- Garden Journal. 
Compared with his novels, they are insignificant enough. 
But even the worst work of such a man is notable in its 
way ; and Fielding's contributions to the Journal are by 
no means to be despised. They are shrewd lay sermons, 
often exhibiting much out-of-the-way erudition, and nearly 
always distinguished by some of his personal qualities. 
In No. 33, on " Profanity," there is a character-sketch 
which, for vigor and vitality, is worthy of his best days; 
and there is also a very thoughtful paper on " Reading," 
containing a kindly reference to " the ingenious Author of 
Clarissa,' 1 '' which should have mollified that implacable 



154 FIELDING. [chap. 

moralist. In this essay it is curious to notice that, while 
Fielding speaks with due admiration of Shakspeare and 
Moliere, Lucian, Cervantes, and Swift, he condemns Rabe- 
lais and Aristophanes, although in the invocation already- 
quoted from Tom Jones he had included both these au- 
thors among the models he admired. Another paper in 
the Covent-Garden Journal is especially interesting, be- 
cause it affords a clue to a project of Fielding's which 
unfortunately remained a project. This was a translation 
of the works of Lucian, to be undertaken in conjunction 
with his old colleague, the Rev. William Young. Propo- 
sals were advertised, and the enterprise was- duly heralded 
by a " puff preliminary," in which Fielding, while abstain- 
ing from anything directly concerning his own abilities, 
observes : " I will only venture to say that no Man seems so 
likely to translate an Author well, as he who hath formed 
his Stile upon that very Author " — a sentence which, taken 
in connection with the references to Lucian in Tom Thumb, 
the Cha'mpion, and elsewhere, must be accepted as distinctly 
autobiographic. The last number of the Covent-Garden 
Journal (No. 72) was issued in November, 1752. By this 
time Sir Alexander seems to have thoroughly wearied of 
his task. With more gravity than usual he takes leave of 
letters, begging the public that they will not henceforth 
father on him the dulness and scurrility of his worthy con- 
temporaries, " since I solemnly declare that, unless in revis- 
ing my former Works, I have at present no Intention to 
hold any further Correspondence with the gayer Muses." 

The labour of conducting the Covent-Garden Journal 
lUMst have been the more severe in that, during the whole 
period of its existence, the editor was vigorously carrying 
out his duties as a magistrate. The prison and political 
scenes in Amelia, which contemporary critics regarded as 



vi.] "AMELIA." 155 

redundant, and which even to us are more curious than es- 
sential, testify at once to his growing interest in reform, 
and his keen appreciation of the defects which existed 
both in the law itself and in the administration of the law ; 
while the numerous cases heard before him, and periodi- 
cally reported in his paper by his clerk, afford ample evi- 
dence of his judicial activity. How completely he regard- 
ed himself (Bathurst and Rigby notwithstanding) as the 
servant of the public, may be gathered from the following 
regularly repeated notice: 

" To the Public. 
" All Persons who shall for the Future, suffer by Robbers, Burg- 
lars, &c., are desired immediately to bring, or send, the best Descrip- 
tion they can of such Robbers, &c, with the Time and Place, and 
Circumstances of the Fact, to Henry Fielding, Esq. ; at his House in 
Bow Street." 

Another instance of his energy in his vocation is to be 
found in the little collection of cases entitled Examples of 
the Interposition of Providence, in the Detection and Pun- 
ishment of Murder, published, with Preface and Introduc- 
tion, in April, 1752, and prompted, as advertisement an- 
nounces, " by the many horrid Murders committed within 
this last Year." It appeared, as a matter of fact, only a 
few days after the execution at Oxford, for parricide, of 
the notorious Miss Mary Blandy, and might be assumed 
to have a more or less timely intention ; but the purity of 
Fielding's purpose is placed beyond a doubt by the fact 
that he freely distributed it in court to those whom it 
seemed calculated to profit. 

The only other works of Fielding which precede the 
posthumously published Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon 
are the Proposal for Making an Effectual Provision for 
the Poor, etc., a pamphlet dedicated to the Right Honble. 



156 FIELDING. [chap. 

Henry Pelham, published in January, 1753 ; and the Clear 
State of the Case of Elizabeth Canning, published in March. 
The former, which the hitherto unfriendly Gentleman's pat- 
ronisingly styles an "excellent piece," conceived in a man- 
ner which gives " a high idea of his [the author's] present 
temper, manners, and ability," is an elaborate project for 
the erection, inter alia, of a vast building, of which a plan, 
" drawn by an Eminent Hand," was given, to be called the 
County - house, capable of containing 5000 inmates, and 
including work-rooms, prisons, an infirmary, and other 
features, the details of which are too minute to be repeat- 
ed in these pages, even if they had received any attention 
from the Legislature, which they did not. The latter was 
Fielding's contribution to the extraordinary judicial puz- 
zle which agitated London in 1753-54. It is needless to 
do more than recall its outline. On the 29th of January, 
1753, one Elizabeth Canning, a domestic servant, aged 
eighteen or thereabouts, and who had hitherto borne an 
excellent character, returned to her mother, having been 
missing from the house of her master, a carpenter, in Al- 
dermanbury, since the 1st of the same month. She was 
half starved and half clad, and alleged that she had been 
abducted, and confined during her absence in a house on 
the Hertford road, from which she had just escaped. This 
house she afterwards identified as that of one Mother 
Wells, a person of very indifferent reputation. An ill- 
favoured old gipsy woman named Mary Squires was also 
declared by her to have been the main agent in ill-using 
and detaining her. The gipsy, it is true, averred that at 
the time of the occurrence she was a hundred and twenty 
miles away ; but Canning persisted in her statement. 
Among other people before whom she came was Fielding, 
who examined her, as well as a vouno- woman called Virtue 



vi.] "AMELIA." 157 

Hall, who appeared subsequently as one of Canning's wit- 
nesses. Fielding seems to have been strongly impressed 
by her appearance and her story, and his pamphlet (which 
was contradicted in every particular by his adversary, John 
Hill) gives a curious and not very edifying picture of the 
magisterial procedure of the time. In February, "Wells 
and Squires were tried : Squires was sentenced to death, 
and Wells to imprisonment and burning in the hand. 
Then, by the exertions of the Lord Mayor, Sir Crisp Gas- 
coyne, who doubted the justice of the verdict, Squires was 
respited and pardoned. Forthwith London was split up 
into Egyptian and Canningite factions; a hailstorm of 
pamphlets set in ; portraits and caricatures of the princi- 
pal personages were in all the print shops; and, to use 

Churchill's words, 

" Betty Canning was at least, 
With Gascoyne's help, a six months' feast." 

In April, 1754, however, Fate so far prevailed against her 
that she herself, in turn, was tried for perjury. Thirty-six 
witnesses swore that Squires had been in Dorsetshire ; 
twenty-six that she had been seen in Middlesex. After 
vSome hesitation, quite of a piece with the rest of the pro- 
ceedings, the jury found Canning guilty; and she was 
transported for seven years. At the end of her sentence 
she returned to England to receive a legacy of £500, which, 
had been left her by an enthusiastic old lady of Newing- 
ton-grecn. Her "case" is full of the most inexplicable 
contradictions; and it occupies in the State Trials some 
420 closely-printed pages of the most curious and pictu- 
resque eighteenth-century details. But how, from the 1st 
of January, 1753, to the 29th of the same month, Elizabeth 
Canning really did manage to spend her time is a secret 
that, to this day, remains undivulged. 



CHAPTER VII. 



In March, 1753, when Fielding published his pamphlet on 
Elizabeth Canning, his life was plainly drawing to a close. 
His energies indeed were unabated, as may be gathered 
from a brief record in the Gentlemari's for that month, 
describing his judicial raid, at four in the morning, upon 
a gaming-room, where he suspected certain highwaymen to 
be assembled. But his body was enfeebled by disease, and 
he knew he could not look for length of days. He had 
lived not long, but much ; he had seen in little space, as 
the motto to Tom Jones announced, "the manners of many 
men ;" and now that, prematurely, the inevitable hour ap- 
proached, he called Cicero and Horace to his aid, and pre- 
pared to meet his fate with philosophic fortitude. Be- 
tween 

"Quern fors dierwn cunque dabit, lucro 
Appone" 
and 

"Grata sitperveniet, qua* non sperabitur, flora,' 

he tells us, in his too-little-consulted Proposal for the Poor, 
he had schooled himself to regard events with equanimity, 
striving above all, in what remained to him of life, to per- 
form the duties of his office efficiently, and solicitous only 
for those he must leave behind him. Henceforward his 



chap. vii.] "JOURNAL OF A VOYAGE TO LISBON." 159 

literary efforts should be mainly philanthropic and practi- 
cal, not without the hope that, if successful, they might 
be the means of securing some provision for his family. 
Of fiction he had taken formal leave in the trial of Amelia, 
and of lighter writing generally in the last paper of the 
Covent- Garden Journal. But, if we may trust his Intro- 
duction, the amount of work he had done for this poor- 
law project must have been enormous, for he had read and 
considered all the laws upon the subject, as well as every- 
thing that had been written on it since the days of Eliza- 
beth, yet he speaks nevertheless as one over whose head 
the sword had all the while been impending : 

"The Attempt, indeed, is such, that the Want of Success can 
scarce be called a Disappointment, tho' I shall have lost much Time, 
and misemployed much Pains ; and what is above all, shall miss 
the Pleasure of thinking that in the Decline of my Health and Life, 
I have conferred a great and lasting Benefit on my Country." 

In words still more resigned and dignified he concludes 
the book: 

His enemies [he says] will no doubt "discover, that instead of in- 
tending a Provision for the Poor, I have been carving out one for 
myself, 1 and have very cunningly projected to build myself a fine 
House at the Expence of the Public. This would be to act in direct 
Opposition to the Advice of my above Master [i. e., Horace] ; it would 
be indeed 

' Struere domos immemor sepulchrV 

Those who do not know me, may believe this ; but those who do, 
will hardly be so deceived by that Chearfulness which was always 
natural to me ; and which, I thank God, my Conscience doth not 
reprove me for, to imagine that I am not sensible of my declining 
Constitution. . . . Ambition or Avarice can no longer raise a Hope, 
or dictate any Scheme to me, who have no further Design than to 

1 Presumably as Governor of the proposed County-house. 



160 FIELDIXG. [chap. 

pass my short Remainder of Life in some Degree of Ease, and, barely 
to preserve my Family from being the Objects of any such Laws as 
1 have here proposed." 

With the exception of the above, and kindred passages 
quoted from the Prefaces to the Miscellanies and the 
Plays, the preceding pages, as the reader has no doubt ob- 
served, contain little of a purely autobiographical charac- 
ter. Moreover, the anecdotes related of Fielding by Mur- 
phy and others have not always been of such a nature as 
to inspire implicit confidence in their accuracy, while of 
the very few letters that have been referred to, none have 
any of those intimate and familiar touches which reveal 
the individuality of the writer. But from the middle of 
1753 up to a short time before his death, Fielding has 
himself related the story of his life, in one of the most un- 
feigned and touching little tracts in our own or any other 
literature. The only thing which, at the moment, suggests 
itself for comparison with the Journal of a Voyage to Lis- 
bon is the letter and dedication which Fielding's prede- 
cessor, Cervantes, prefixes to his last romance of Persiles 
and Sigismunda. In each case the words are animated by 
the same uncomplaining kindliness — the same gallant and 
indomitable spirit ; in each case the writer is a dying man. 
Cervantes survived the date of his letter to the Conde de 
Lemos but three days ; and the Journal, says Fielding's 
editor (probably his brother John), was "finished almost 
at the same period with life." It was written, from its 
author's account, in those moments of the voyage when, 
his womankind being sea-sick, and the crew wholly ab- 
sorbed in working the ship, he was thrown upon his own 
resources, and compelled to employ his pen to while away 
the time. The Preface, and perhaps the Introduction, 
were added after his arrival at Lisbon, in the brief period 



vii.] "JOURNAL OF A VOYAGE TO LISBON." 161 

before his death. The former is a semi-humorous apology 
for voyage-writing ; the latter gives an account of the cir- 
cumstances which led to this his last expedition in search 
of health. 

At the beginning of August, 1753, Fielding tells us, 
having taken the Duke of Portland's medicine 1 for near a 
year, " the effects of which had been the carrying off the 
symptoms of a lingering imperfect gout," Mr. Ranby, the 
King's Sergeant-Surgeon 2 (to whom complimentary refer- 
ence had been made in the Man of the Hill's story in Tom 
Jones), with other able physicians, advised him "to go im- 
mediately to Bath." He accordingly engaged lodgings, 
and prepared to leave town forthwith. While he was 
making ready for his departure, and was " almost fatigued 
to death with several long examinations, relating to five 
different murders, all committed within the space of a 
week, by different gangs of street robbers," he received a 
message from the Duke of Newcastle, afterwards Premier, 
through that Mr. Carrington whom Walpole calls "the 
cleverest of all ministerial terriers," requesting his attend- 
ance in Lincoln's-inn Fields (Newcastle House). Being 
lame, and greatly over-taxed, Fielding excused himself. 
But the Duke sent Mr. Carrington again next day, and 
Fielding with great difficulty obeyed the summons. After 
waiting some three hours in the antechamber (no unusual 
feature, as Lord Chesterfield informs us, of the Newcastle 
audiences), a gentleman was deputed to consult him as to 
the devising of a plan for putting an immediate end to 

1 A popular eighteenth-centurv gout-powder, but as old as Galen. 
The receipt for it is given in the Gentleman's Magazine, vol. xxiii., 
p. 579. 

2 Mr. Ranby was also the friend of Hogarth, who etched his house 
at Chiswick. 



162 FIELDING. [chap. 

the murders and robberies which had become so common. 
This, although the visit cost him " a severe cold," Fielding 
at once undertook. A proposal was speedily drawn out 
and submitted to the Privy Council. Its essential features 
were the employment of a known informer, and the pro- 
vision of funds for that purpose. 

By the time this scheme was finally approved Fielding's 
disorder had " turned to a deep jaundice," in which case 
the Bath waters were generally regarded as " almost infal- 
lible." But his eager desire to break up " this gang of 
villains and cut-throats" delayed him in London; and a 
day or two after he had received a portion of the stipu- 
lated grant (which portion, it seems, took several weeks 
in arriving), the whole body were entirely dispersed — 
" seven of them were in actual custody, and the rest 
driven, some out of town, and others out of the kingdom." 
In examining them, however, and in taking depositions, 
which often occupied whole days and sometimes nights, 
although he had the satisfaction of knowing that during 
the dark months of November and December the metro- 
polis enjoyed complete immunity from murder and rob- 
bery, his own health was " reduced to the last extremity." 

" Mine [he says] was now no longer what is called a 
Bath case," nor, if it had been, could his strength have 
sustained the "intolerable fatigue" of the journey thither. 
He accordingly gave up his Bath lodgings, which he had 
hitherto retained, and went into the country "in a very 
weak and deplorable condition." He was suffering from 
jaundice, dropsy, and asthma, under which combination 
of diseases his body was "so entirely emaciated, that it 
had lost all its muscular flesh." He had begun with rea- 
son " to look on his case as desperate," and might fairly 
have regarded himself as voluntarily sacrificed to the good 



vii.] "JOURNAL OF A VOYAGE TO LISBON." 163 

of the public. But he is far too honest to assign his 
action to philanthropy alone. His chief object (he owns) 
had been, if possible, to secure some provision for his fam- 
ily \v the event of his death. Not being a " trading jus- 
tice" — that is, a justice who took bribes from suitors, 
like Justice Thrasher, in Amelia, or Justice Squeez'um, in 
the Coffee House Politician — his post at Bow Street had 
scarcely been a lucrative one. " By composing, instead of 
inflaming, the quarrels of porters and beggars (which I 
blush when I say hath not been universally practised) and 
by refusing to take a shilling from a man who most un- 
doubtedly would not have had another left, I had reduced 
an income of about 500/. a year of the dirtiest money upon 
earth to little more than 300/., a considerable proportion 
of which remained with my clerk." Besides the residue 
of his justice's fees, he had also, he informs us, a yearly 
pension from the Government, " out of the public service- 
money," but the amount is not stated. The rest of his 
means, as far as can be ascertained, were derived from his 
literary labours. To a man of his lavish disposition, and 
with the claims of a family upon him, this could scarcely 
have been a competence ; and if, as appears not very clear- 
ly from a note in the Journal, he now resigned his office 
to his half-brother, who had long been his assistant, his 
private affairs at the beginning of the winter of 1753-54 
must, as he says, have " had but a gloomy aspect." In 
the event of his death his wife and children could have no 
hope except from some acknowledgment by the Govern- 
ment of his past services. 

Meanwhile his diseases were slowly gaining ground. 
The terrible winter of 1753-54, which, from the weather 
record in the Gentleman s, seems, with small intermission, 
to have been prolonged far into April, was especially try^ 



164 FIELDING. [chap. 

ing to asthmatic patients, and consequently wholly against 
him. In February he returned to town, and put himself 
under the care of the notorious Dr. Joshua Ward, of Pall 
Mall, by whom he was treated and tapped for dropsy. 1 
He was at his worst, he says, " on that memorable day 
when the public lost Mr. Pelham " (March 6th) ; but from 
this time he began, under Ward's medicines, to acquire 
" some little degree of strength," although his dropsy in- 
creased. With May came the long-delayed spring, and 
he moved to Fordhook, 2 a " little house" belonging to him 
at Ealing, the air of which place then enjoyed a consid- 
erable reputation, being reckoned the best in Middlesex, 
"and far superior to that of Kensington Gravel-Pits." 
Here a reperusal of Bishop Berkeley's Sirts, which had 
been recalled to his memory by Mrs. Charlotte Lennox, 
"the inimitable author of the Female Quixote,'" set him 
drinking tar- water with apparent good effect, except as far 
as his chief ailment was concerned. The applications of 
the trocar became more frequent: the summer, if summer 
it could be called, was " mouldering away ;" and winter, 
with all its danger to an invalid, was drawing on apace. 
Nothing seemed hopeful but removal to a warmer climate. 
Aix, in Provence, was at first thought of, but the idea was 
abandoned, on account of the difficulties of the journey. 

1 Ward appears in Hogarth's Consultation of Physicians, 1736, 
and in Pope — " Ward try'd on Puppies, and the Poor, his drop." He 
was a quack, but must have possessed considerable ability. Boling- 
broke wished Pope to consult him in 1744 ; and he attended George 
II. There is an account of him in Nichols's Genuine Works of 
Hogarth, vol. i., p. 89. 

2 It lay on the Uxbridge road, a little beyond Acton, and nearly 
opposite the present Ealing Common Station of the Metropolitan 
District Railway. The site is now occupied by a larger house bear- 
ing the same name, belonging to Captain Tyrrell. 



til] "JOURNAL OF A VOYAGE TO LISBON." 165 

Lisbon, where Doddridge had died three years before, was 
then chosen ; a passage in a vessel trading to the port was 
engaged for the sick man, his wife, daughter, and two ser- 
vants ; and after some delays they started. At this point 
the actual Journal begins with a well-remembered entry : 

" Wednesday, June 26</t, 1754.— On this day, the most melancholy 
sun I had ever beheld arose, and found me awake at my house at 
Fordhook. By the light of this sun, I was, in my own opinion, last to 
behold and take leave of some of those creatures on whom I doated 
with a mother-like fondness, guided by nature and passion, and un- 
cured and unhardened by all the doctrine of that philosophical 
school where I had learnt to bear pains and to despise death. 

"In this situation, as I could not conquer nature, I submitted en- 
tirely to her, and she made as great a fool of me as she had ever 
done of any woman whatsoever : under pretence of giving me leave 
to enjoy, she drew me to suffer the company of my little ones, dur- 
ing eight hours ; and I doubt not whether, in that time, I did not 
undergo more than in all my distemper. 

"At twelve precisely my coach was at the door, which was no 
sooner told me than I kiss'd my children round, and went into it 
with some little resolution. My wife, who behaved more like a her- 
oine and philosopher, tho' at the same time the tenderest mother 
in the world, and my eldest daughter, followed me ; some friends 
went with us, and others here took their leave ; and I heard my be- 
haviour applauded, with many murmurs and praises to which I well 
knew I had no title ; as all other such philosophers may, if they 
have any modesty, confess on the like occasions." 

Two hours later the party reached Rotherhithe. Here, 
with the kindly assistance of his and Hogarth's friend, 
Mr. Saunders Welch, High Constable of Holborn, the sick 
man, who, at this time, " had no use of his limbs," was 
carried to a boat, and hoisted in a chair over the ship's 
side; This latter journey, far more fatiguing to the suf- 
ferer than the twelve miles' ride which he had previously 
undergone, was not rendered more easy to bear by th& 



166 FIELDING. [chap. 

jests of the watermen and sailors, to whom his ghastly, 
death-stricken countenance seemed matter for merriment ; 
and he was greatly rejoiced to find himself safely seated 
in the cabin. The voyage, however, already more than 
once deferred, was not yet to begin. Wednesday, being 
King's Proclamation Day, the vessel could not be cleared 
at the Custom House ; and on Thursday the skipper an- 
nounced that he should not set out until Saturday. As 
Fielding's complaint was again becoming troublesome, and 
no surgeon was available on board, he sent for his friend, 
the famous anatomist, Mr. Hunter, of Covent Garden, 1 by 
whom he was tapped, to his own relief, and the admira- 
tion of the simple sea-captain, who (he writes) was greatly 
impressed by " the heroic constancy, with which I had 
borne an operation that is attended with scarce any degree 
of pain." On Sunday the vessel dropped down to Graves- 
end, where, on the next day, Mr. Welch, who until then 
had attended them, took his leave ; and Fielding, relieved 
by the trocar of any immediate apprehensions of discom- 
fort, might, in spite of his forlorn case, have been fairly 
at ease. He had a new concern, however, in the state of 
Mrs. Fielding, who was in agony with toothache, which 
successive operators failed to relieve ; and there is an un- 
consciously touching little picture of the sick man and his 
skipper, who was deaf, sitting silently over " a small bowl 
of punch" in the narrow cabin, for fear of waking the 
pain-worn sleeper in the adjoining state-room. Of his 
second wife, as may be gathered from the opening words 
of the Journal, Fielding always speaks with the warmest 
affection and gratitude. Elsewhere, recording a storm off 
the Isle of Wight, he says : " My dear wife and child must 

1 This must have been William Hunter, for in 1754 his more dis- 
tinguished brother, John, had not yet become celebrated. 



vii.] " JOURNAL OF A VOYAGE TO LISBON." 167 

pardon me, if what I did not conceive to be any great evil 
to myself, I was not much terrified with the thoughts of 
happening to them : in truth, I have often thought they 
are both too good, and too gentle, to be trusted to the 
power of any man." With what a tenacity of courtesy 
he treated the whilom Mary Daniel may be gathered from 
the following vignette of insolence in office, which can be 
taken as a set-off to the malicious tattle of Walpole : 

" Soon after their departure [i. e., Mr. Welch and a companion], our 
cabin, where my wife and I were sitting together, was visited by two 
ruffians, whose appearance greatly corresponded with that of the 
sheriff's, or rather the knight-marshal's bailiffs. One of these espe- 
cially, who seemed to affect a more than ordinary degree of rudeness 
and insolence, came in without any kind of ceremony, with a broad 
gold lace upon his hat, which was cocked with much military fierce- 
ness on his head. An inkhorn at his button-hole, and some papers 
in his hand, sufficiently assured me what he was, and I asked him 
if he and his companions were not custom-house officers ; he an- 
swered with sufficient dignity that they were, as an information 
which he seemed to consider would strike the hearer with awe, and 
suppress all further inquiry ; but on the contrary I proceeded to ask 
of what rank he was in the Custom house, and receiving an answer 
from his companion, as I remember, that the gentleman was a riding 
surveyor ; I replied, that he might be a riding surveyor, but could be 
no gentleman, for that none who had any title to that denomination 
would break into the presence of a lady, without any apology, or even 
moving his hat. He then took his covering from his head, and laid 
it on the table, saying, he asked pardon, and blamed the mate, who 
should, he said, have informed him if any persons of distinction were 
below. I told him he might guess from our appearance (which, 
perhaps, was rather more than could be said with the strictest ad- 
herence to truth) that he was before a gentleman and lady, which 
should teach him to be very civil in his behaviour, tho' we should 
not happen to be of the number whom the world calls people of 
fashion and distinction. However, I said, that as he seemed sensible 
of his error, and had asked pardon, the lady would permit him to 
put his hat on again, if he chose it. This he refused with some 
M 



168 FIELDING. [chap. 

degree of surliness, and failed not to convince me that, if I should 
condescend to become more gentle, he would soon grow more rude." 

The date of this occurrence was July the 1st. On the 
evening of the same day they weighed anchor and man- 
aged to reach the Nore. For more than a week they were 
wind-bound in the Downs; but on the 11th they anchored 
off Ryde, from which place, on the next morning, Field- 
ing despatched the following letter to his brother. Be- 
sides giving the name of the captain and the ship, which 
are carefully suppressed in the Journal, 1 it is especially in- 
teresting as being the last letter written by Fielding of 
which we have any knowledge : 

" On board the Queen of Portugal, Rich d Veal at anchor on 
the Mother Bank, off Ryde, to the Care of the Post Master 
of Portsmouth — this is my Date and y r Direction. 

July 12 1754. 
" Dear Jack, After receiving that agreeable Lre from Mess"- Field- 
ing and Co., we weighed on monday morning and sailed from Deal 
to the Westward Four Days long but inconceivably pleasant Passage 
brought us yesterday to an Anchor on the Mother Bank, on the 
Back of the Isle of Wight, where we had last Night in Safety the 
Pleasure of hearing the Winds roar over our Heads in as violent a 
Tempest as I have known, and where my only Consideration were 
the Fears which must possess any Friend of ours, (if there is happily 
any such) who really makes our Wellbeing the Object of his Concern 
especially if such Friend should be totally inexperienced in Sea 
Affairs. I therefore beg that on the Day you receive this M rs 

1 Probably this was intentional. Notwithstanding the statement 
in the " Dedication to the Public" that the text is given " as it came 
from the hands of the author," the Journal, in the first issue of 1755, 
seems to have been considerably " edited." " Mrs. Francis " (the 
Ryde landlady) is there called " Mrs. Humphrys," and the portrait of 
the military coxcomb, together with some particulars of Fielding's 
visit to the Duke of Newcastle and other details, are wholly omitted, 



vit] " JOURNAL OF A VOYAGE TO LISBON." 169 

Daniel l may know that we are just risen from Breakfast in Health 
and Spirits this twelfth Instant at 9 in the morning. Our Voyage 
hath proved fruitful in Adventures all which being to be written in 
the Book, you must postpone y r Curiosity As the Incidents which 
fall under y r Cognizance will possibly be consigned to Oblivion, do 
give them to us as they pass. Tell y r Neighbour I am much obliged 
to him for recommending me to the Care of a most able and experi- 
enced Seaman to whom other Captains seem to pay such Deference 
that they attend and watch his Motions, and think themselves only 
safe when they act under his Direction and Example. Our Ship in 
Truth seems to give Laws on the Water with as much Authority and 
Superiority as you Dispense Laws to the Public and Examples to y r 
Brethren in Commission. Please to direct y r Answer to me on 
Board as in the Date, if gone to be returned, and then send it by 
the Post and Pacquet to Lisbon to 

" Y r affec* Brother 

" H. Fielding 
" To John Fielding Esq. at his House in 
Bow Street Cov 1 Garden London." 

As the Queen of Portugal did not leave Ryde until the 
23rd, it is possible that Fielding received a reply. During 
the remainder of this desultory voyage he continued to be- 
guile his solitary hours — hours of which we are left to im- 
agine the physical torture and monotony, for he says but 
little of himself — by jottings and notes of the, for the most 
part, trivial incidents of his progress. That happy cheer- 
fulness, of which he spoke in the Proposal for the Poor, 
had not yet deserted him ; and there are moments when 
he seems rather on a pleasure-trip than a forlorn pilgrim- 
age in search of health. At Ryde, where, for change of 

1 It will be remembered that the maiden-name of Fielding's sec- 
ond wife, as given in the Register of St. Bene't's, was Mary Daniel. 
" Mrs. Daniel " was therefore, in all probability, Fielding's mother-in- 
law; and it may reasonably be assumed that she had remained in 
charge of the little family at Fordhook, 



110 FIELDING. [chap. 

air, he went ashore, he chronicles, after many discomforts 
from the most disobliging of landladies (let the name of 
Mrs. Francis go down to posterity !), " the best, the pleas- 
antest, and the merriest meal, [in a barn] with more appe- 
tite, more real, solid luxury, and more festivity, than was 
ever seen in an entertainment at White's." At Torbay he 
expatiates upon the merits and flavour of the John Dory, 
a specimen of which "gloriously regaled" the party, and 
furnished him with a pretext for a dissertation on the Lon- 
don Fish Supply. Another page he devotes to commenda- 
tion of the excellent Vinum Pomonce, or Southam cider, 
supplied by " Mr. Giles Leverance of Cheeshurst, near Dart- 
mouth, in Devon," of which, for the sum of five pounds ten 
shillings, he extravagantly purchases three hogsheads, one 
for himself, and the others as presents for friends, among 
whom no doubt was kindly Mr. Welch. Here and there 
he sketches, with but little abatement of his earlier gaiety 
and vigour, the human nature around him. Of the objec- 
tionable Ryde landlady and her husband there are portraits 
not much inferior to those of the Tow-wouses in Joseph 
Andrews, while the military fop, who visits his uncle the 
captain off Spithead, is drawn with all the insight which 
depicted the vagaries of Ensign North erton, whom indeed 
the real hero of the Journal not a little resembles. The 
best character sketch, however, in the whole is that of 
Captain Richard Veal himself (one almost feels inclined to 
wonder whether he was in any way related to the worthy 
lady whose apparition visited Mrs. Bargrave at Canter- 
bury !), but it is of necessity somewhat dispersed. It has. 
also an additional attraction, because, if we remember right- 
ly, it is Fielding's sole excursion into the domain of Smol- 
lett. The rough old sea-dog of the Haddock and Vernon 
period, who had been a privateer ; and who still, as skipper 



vil] "JOURNAL OF A VOYAGE TO LISBON." 171 

of a merchant-man, when he visits a friend or gallants the 
ladies, decorates himself with a scarlet coat, cockade, and 
sword ; who gives vent to a kind of Irish howl when his 
favourite kitten is suffocated under a feather bed ; and falls 
abjectly on his knees when threatened with the dreadful 
name of Law, is a character which, in its surly good hu- 
mour and sensitive dignity, might easily, under more fa- 
vourable circumstances, have grown into an individuality, 
if not equal to that of Squire Western, at leact on a level 
with Partridge or Colonel Bath. There are numbers of 
minute touches — as, for example, his mistaking "a lion" 
for " Elias " when he reads prayers to the ship's company ; 
and his quaint asseverations when exercised by the incon- 
stancy of the wind — which show how closely Fielding 
studied his deaf companion. But it would occupy too 
large a space to examine the Journal more in detail. It is 
sufficient to sa}^ that after some further delays from wind 
and tide, the travellers sailed up the Tagus. Here, having 
undergone the usual quarantine and custom-house obstruc- 
tion, they landed, and Fielding's penultimate words record a 
good supper at Lisbon, " for which we were as well charged, 
as if the bill had been made on the Bath Road, between 
Newbury and London." The book ends with a line from 
the poet whom, in the Proposal for the Poor, he had called 

his master: 

" Hie finis chartceque viceque." 

Two months afterwards he died at Lisbon, on the 8th of 
October, in the forty-eighth year of his age. 

He was buried on the hillside in the centre of the beau- 
tiful English cemetery, which faces the great Basilica of 
the Heart of Jesus, otherwise known as the Church of the 
Estrella. Here, in a leafy spot where the nightingales fill 
the still air with song, and watched by those secular cy- 



172 FIELDING. [chap. 

presses from which the place takes its Portuguese name 
of Os Cypi'estes, lies all that was mortal of him whom Scott 
called the "Father of the English Novel." His first tomb, 
which AVraxall found, in 1772, " nearly concealed by weeds 
and nettles," was erected by the English factory, in conse- 
quence mainly — as it seems — of a proposal made by an en- 
thusiastic Chevalier de Meyrionnet, to provide one (with 
an epitaph) at his own expense. That now existing was 
substituted in 1830, by the exertions of the Rev. Christo- 
pher Neville, British Chaplain at Lisbon. It is a heavy 
sarcophagus, resting upon a large base, and surmounted 
by just such another urn and flame as that on Hogarth's 
Tomb at Chiswick. On the front is a long Latin inscrip- 
tion ; on the back the better-known words : 

"Luget Britannia Gremio non dari 
fovere natcm." * 

It is to this last memorial that the late George Borrow 
referred in his Bible in Spain : 

" Let travellers devote one entire morning to inspecting the Arcos 
and the Mai das agoas, after which they may repair to the English 
church and cemetery, Pere-la-chaise in miniature, where, if they be of 
England, they may well be excused if they kiss the cold tomb, as I 
did, of the author of Amelia, the most singular genius which their 
island ever produced, whose works it has long been the fashion to 
abuse in public and to read in secret." 

Borrow's book was first published in 1843. Of late 
years the tomb had been somewhat neglected ; but from 
a communication in the Athenaeum of May, 1879, it ap- 
pears that it had then been recently cleaned, and the in- 

1 The fifth word is generally given as " datum." But the above 
version, which has been verified at Lisbon, may be accepted as 
correct. 



vil] " JOURNAL OF A VOYAGE TO LISBON." 173 

scriptions restored, by order of the present chaplain, the 
Rev. Godfrey Pope. 

There is but one authentic portrait of Henry Fielding. 
This is the pen-and-ink sketch drawn from memory by 
Hogarth, long after Fielding's death, to serve as a frontis- 
piece for Murphy's edition of his works. It was engraved 
in facsimile by James Basire, with such success that the 
artist is said to have mistaken an impression of the plate 
(without its emblematic border) for his own drawing. 
Hogarth's sketch is the sole source of all the portraits, 
more or less " romanced," which are prefixed to editions 
of Fielding ; and also, there is good reason to suspect, of 
the dubious little miniature, still in possession of his de- 
scendants, which figures in Hutchins's History of Dorset 
and elsewhere. More than one account has been given of 
the way in which the drawing was produced. The most 
effective, and, unfortunately, the most popular, version has, 
of course, been selected by Murphy. In this he tells us 
that Hogarth, being unable to recall his dead friend's feat- 
ures, had recourse to a profile cut in paper by a lady, who 
possessed the happy talent which Pope ascribes to Lady 
.Burlington. Her name, which is given in Nichols, was 
Margaret Collier, and she was possibly the identical Miss 
Collier who figures in Richardson's Correspondence. Set- 
ting aside the fact that, as Hogarth's eye -memory was 
phenomenal, this story is highly improbable, it was ex- 
pressly contradicted by George Steevens in 1781, and by 
John Ireland in 1798, both of whom, from their relations 
with Hogarth's family, were likely to be credibly informed. 
Steevens, after referring to Murphy's fable, says in the Bi- 
ographical Anecdotes of William Hogarth : " I am assured 
that our artist began and finished the head in the presence 
of his wife and another lady. He had no assistance but 



174 FIELDING. [chap. 

from his own memory, which, on such occasions, was re- 
markably tenacious." Ireland, in his Hogarth Illustrated, 
gives us as the simple fact the following : " Hogarth being 
told, after his friend's death, that a portrait was wanted as 
a frontispiece to his works, sketched this from memory." 
According to the inscription on Basire's plate, it repre- 
sents Fielding at the age of forty-eight, or in the year of 
his death. This, however, can only mean that it repre- 
sents him as Hogarth had last seen him. But long before 
he died disease had greatly altered his appearance ; and 
he must have been little more than the shadow of the 
handsome Harry Fielding, who wrote farces for Mrs. Clive, 
and heard the chimes at midnight. As he himself says in 
the Voyage to Lisbon, he had lost his teeth, and the con- 
sequent falling-in of the lips is plainly perceptible in the 
profile. The shape of the Roman nose, which Colonel 
James in Amelia irreverently styled a " proboscis," would, 
however, remain unaltered, and it is still possible to divine 
a curl, half humorous, half ironic, in the short upper lip. 
The eye, apparently, was dark and deep-set. Oddly enough, 
the chin, to the length of which he had himself referred in 
the Champion, does not appear abnormal. 1 Beyond the 
fact that he was above six feet in height, and, until the 
gout had broken his constitution, unusually robust, Mur- 

1 In the bust of Fielding which Miss Margaret Thomas has been 
commissioned by Mr. R. A. Kinglake to execute for the Somerset 
Valhalla, the Shire-hall at Taunton, these points have been carefully 
considered ; and the sculptor has succeeded in producing a work 
which, while it suggests the mingling of humour and dignity that is 
Fielding's chief characteristic, is also generally faithful to Hogarth's 
indications. From these, indeed, it is impossible to deviate. Not 
only is his portrait unique, but (and this is confirmed by Ireland 
and Steevens) it was admitted to be like Fielding by Fielding's 
friends. 



Tti.] "JOURNAL OF A VOYAGE TO LISBON." 175 

phy adds nothing further to our idea of his personal ap- 
pearance. 

That other picture of his character, traced and retraced 
(often with much exaggeration of outline), is so familiar 
in English literature, that it cannot now be materially al- 
tered or amended. Yet it is impossible not to wish that 
it were derived from some less prejudiced or more trust- 
worthy witnesses than those who have spoken — say, for 
example, from Lyttelton or Allen. There are always signs 
that Walpole's malice, and Smollett's animosity, and the 
rancour of Richardson, have had too much to do with the 
representation ; and even Murphy and Lady Mary are 
scarcely persons whom one would select as ideal biogra- 
phers. The latter is probably right in comparing her cous- 
in to Sir Richard Steele. Both were generous, kindly, 
brave, and sensitive; both were improvident; both loved 
women and little children ; both sinned often, and had 
their moments of sincere repentance ; to both was given 
that irrepressible hopefulness, and full delight of being, 
which forgets to-morrow in to-day. That Henry Fielding 
was wild and reckless in his youth it would be idle to con- 
test — indeed, it is an intelligible, if not a necessary, con- 
sequence of his physique and his temperament. But it is 
not fair to speak of him as if his youth lasted for ever. 
" Critics and biographers," says Mr. Leslie Stephen, " have 
dwelt far too exclusively upon the uglier side of his Bohe- 
mian life ;" and Fielding himself, in the Jacobite's Jour- 
nal, complains sadly that his enemies have traced his im- 
peachment " even to his boyish Years." That he who was 
prodigal as a lad was prodigal as a man may be conceded ; 
that he who was sanguine at twenty would be sanguine at 
forty (although this is less defensible) may also be allowed. 
But, if we press for "better assurance than Bardolph," 



176 FIELDING. [chap. 

there is absolutely no good evidence that Fielding's career 
after his marriage materially differed from that of other 
men struggling for a livelihood, hampered with ill-health, 
and exposed to all the shifts and humiliations of necessity. 
If any portrait of him is to be handed down to posterity, 
let it be the last rather than the first — not the Fielding of 
the green-room and the tavern, of Co vent Garden frolics 
and "modern conversations;" but the energetic magis- 
trate, the tender husband and father, the kindly host of 
his poorer friends, the practical philanthropist, the patient 
and magnanimous hero of the Voyage to Lisbon. If these 
things be remembered, it will seem of minor importance 
that to his dying day he never knew the value of money, 
or that he forgot his troubles over a chicken and cham- 
pagne. And even his improvidence was not without its 
excusable side. Once — so runs the legend — Andrew Mil- 
lar made him an advance to meet the claims of an import- 
unate tax-gatherer. Carrying it home, he met a friend, in 
even worse straits than his own ; and the money changed 
hands. When the tax-gatherer arrived there was nothing 
but the answer — " Friendship has called for the money 
and had it; let the collector call again." Justice, it is 
needless to say, was satisfied by a second advance from 
the bookseller. But who shall condemn the man of whom 
such a story can be told ? 

The literary work of Fielding is so inextricably inter- 
woven with what is known of his life that most of it has 
been examined in the course of the foregoing narrative. 
What remains to be said is chiefly in summary of what 
has been said already. As a dramatist he has no emi- 
nence ; and though his plays do not deserve the sweeping 
condemnation with which Macaulay once spoke of them 
in the House of Commons, they are not likely to attract 



Vii.] " JOURNAL OF A VOYAGE TO LISBON." 177 

any critics but those for whom the inferior efforts of a 
great genius possess a morbid fascination. Some of them 
serve, in a measure, to illustrate his career; others contain 
hints and situations which he afterwards worked into his 
novels ; but the only ones that possess real stage qualities 
are those which he borrowed from Regnard and Moliere. 
Don Quixote in England, Pasquin, the Historical Register, 
can claim no present consideration commensurate with 
that which they received as contemporary satires, and 
their interest is mainly antiquarian ; while Tom Thumb 
and the Covent - Garden Tragedy, the former of which 
would make the reputation of a smaller man, can scarcely 
hope to be remembered beside Amelia or Jonathan Wild. 
Nor can it be admitted that, as a periodical writer, Field- 
ing was at his best. In spite of effective passages, his 
essays remain far below the work of the great Augustans, 
and are not above the level of many of their less illus- 
trious imitators. That instinct of popular selection, which 
retains a faint hold upon the Rambler, the Adventurer, 
the World j and the Connoisseur, or at least consents to 
give them honourable interment as "British Essayists" 
in a secluded corner of the shelves, has made no pretence 
to any preservation, or even any winnowing, of the Cham- 
pion and the True Patriot. Fielding's papers are learn- 
ed and ingenious; they are frequently humorous; they 
are often earnest; but it must be a loiterer in literature 
who, in these days, except for antiquarian or biographi- 
cal purposes, can honestly find it worth while to consult 
them. His pamphlets and projects are more valuable, if 
only that they prove him to have looked curiously and 
sagaciously at social and political problems, and to have 
striven, as far as in him lay, to set the crooked straight. 
Their import, to-day, is chiefly that of links in a chain 
8* 



IIS FIELDING. [chap. 

— of contributions to a progressive literature which has 
travelled into regions unforeseen by the author of the 
Proposal for the Poor, and the Inquiry into the Causes 
of the late Increase of Robbers. As such, they have their 
place in that library of political economy of which Mr. 
M'Culloch has catalogued the riches. It is not, however, 
by his pamphlets, his essays, or his plays that Fielding is 
really memorable ; it is by his triad of novels, and the sur- 
passing study in irony of Jonathan Wild. In Joseph An- 
drews we have the first sprightly runnings of a genius 
that, after much uncertainty, had at last found its fitting 
vein, but was yet doubtful and undisciplined: in Tom 
Jones the perfect plan has come, with the perfected method 
and the assured expression. There is an inevitable loss of 
that fine waywardness which is sometimes the result of 
untrained effort, but there is the general gain of order, 
and the full production which results of art. The highest 
point is reached in Tom Jones, which is the earliest defi- 
nite and authoritative manifestation of the modern novel. 
Its relation to De Foe is that of the vertebrate to the in- 
vertebrate ; to Richardson, that of the real to the ideal — 
one might almost add, the impossible. It can be com- 
pared to no contemporary English work of its own kind; 
and if we seek for its parallel at the time of publication 
we must go beyond literature to art — to the masterpiece 
of that great pictorial satirist who was Fielding's friend. 
In both Fielding and Hogarth there is the same construc- 
tive power, the same rigid sequence of cause and effect, 
the same significance of detail, the same side-light of al- 
lusion. Both have the same hatred of affectation and 
hypocrisy — the same unerring insight into character. 
Both are equally attracted by striking contrasts and comic 
situations ; in both there is the same declared morality of 



vii.] "JOURNAL OF A VOYAGE TO LISBON." 179 

purpose, coupled with the same sturdy virility of expres- 
sion. One, it is true, leaned more strongly to tragedy, the 
other to comedy. But if Fielding had painted pictures, it 
would have been in the style of the Marriage a la Mode ; 
if Hogarth had written novels, they would have been in 
the style of Tom Jones. In the gentler and more subdued 
Amelia, with its tender and womanly central-figure, there 
is a certain change of plan, due to altered conditions — it 
may be, to an altered philosophy of art. The narrative 
is less brisk and animated; the character -painting less 
broadly humorous; the philanthropic element more strong- 
ly developed. To trace the influence of these three great 
works in succeeding writers would hold us too long. It 
may, nevertheless, be safely asserted that there are few 
English novels of manners, written since Fielding's day, 
which do not descend from him as from their fount and 
source ; and that more than one of our modern masters 
betrays unmistakable signs of a form and fashion studied 
minutely from his frank and manly ancestor. 



POSTSCEIPT. 

A few particulars respecting Fielding's family and post- 
humous works can scarcely be omitted from the present 
memoir. It has been stated that by his first wife he had 
one daughter, the Eleanor Harriot who accompanied him 
to Lisbon, and survived him, although Mr. Keightley says, 
but without giving his authority, she did not survive him 
long. Of his family by Mary Daniel, the eldest son, Wil- 
liam, to whose birth reference has already been made, was 
bred to the law, became a barrister of the Middle Temple 
eminent as a special pleader, and ultimately a Westmin- 
ster magistrate. He died in October, 1820, at the age of 
seventy-three. He seems to have shared his father's con- 
versational qualities, 1 and, like him, to have been a strenu- 
ous advocate of the poor and unfortunate. Southey, writ- 
ing from Keswick in 1830 to Sir Egerton Brydges, speaks 
of a meeting he had in St. James's Park, about 1817, with 
one of the novelist's sons. " He was then," says Southey, 
" a fine old man, though visibly shaken by time : he re- 
ceived me in a manner which had much of old courtesy 
about it, and I looked upon him with great interest for 
his father's sake." The date, and the fact that William 
Fielding had had a paralytic stroke, make it almost cer- 
tain that this was he ; and a further reference by Southey 

1 Vide Lockhart's Life of Scott, chap. 1. 



POSTSCRIPT. 181 

to his religious opinions is confirmed by the obituary no- 
tice in the Gentleman's, which speaks of him as a worthy 
and pious man. The names and baptisms of the remaining 
children, as supplied for these pages by the late Colonel 
Chester, were : Mary Amelia, baptized January 6,1749; 
Sophia, January 21, 1750 ; Louisa, December 3, 1752 ; and 
Allen, April 6, 1754, about a month before Fielding re- 
moved to Ealing. All these baptisms took place at St. 
Paul's, Covent Garden, from the registers of which these 
particulars were extracted. The eldest daughter, Mary 
Amelia, does not appear to have long survived, for the 
same registers record her burial on the 17th of December, 
1749. Allen Fielding became a clergyman, and died, ac- 
cording to Burke, in 1823, being then vicar of St. Ste- 
phen's, Canterbury. He left a family of four sons and 
three daughters. One of the sons, George, became rector 
of North Ockendon, Essex, and married, in 1825, Mary 
Rebecca, daughter of Ferdinand Hanbury- Williams, and 
grandniece of Fielding's friend and school - fellow, Sir 
Charles. This lady, who so curiously linked the pres- 
ent and the past, died not long since at Hereford Square, 
Brompton, in her eighty -fifth year. Mrs. Fielding her- 
self (Mary Daniel) appears to have attained a good old 
age. Her death took place at Canterbury on the 11th of 
March, 1802, perhaps in the house of her son Allen, who 
is stated by Nichols in his Leicestershire to hatfe been 
rector in 1803 of St. Cosmus and Damian-in-the-Blean. 
After her husband's death, her children were educated by 
their uncle John and Ralph Allen, the latter of whom — 
says Murphy — made a very liberal "annual donation for 
that purpose; and (adds Chalmers in a note) when he 
died, in 1764, bequeathed to the widow and those of her 
family then living the sum of ,£100 each, 



182 FIELDING. 

Among Fielding's other connections it is only necessary 
to speak of his sister Sarah, and his above-mentioned 
brother John. Sarah Fielding continued to write ; and in 
addition to David Simple, published the Governess, 1749; 
a translation of Xenophon's Memorabilia; a dramatic fa- 
ble called the Cry, and some other forgotten books. Dur- 
ing the latter part of her life she lived at Bath, where she 
was highly popular, both for her personal character and 
her accomplishments. She died in 1768; and her friend, 
Dr. John Hoadly, who wrote the verses to the Rakers Prog- 
ress, erected a monument to her memory in the Abbey 
Church. 

" Her unaffected Manners, candid Mind, 
Her Heart benevolent, and Soul resign'd, 
Were more her Praise than all she knew or thought, 
Though Athens Wisdom to her Sex she taught," 

says he ; but in mere facts the inscription is, as he mod- 
estly styles it, a M deficient Memorial/' for she is described 
as having been born in 1714 instead of 1710, and as being 
the second daughter of General Henry instead of General 
Edmund Fielding. John Fielding, the novelist's half- 
brother, as already stated, succeeded him at Bow Street, 
though the post is sometimes claimed (on Boswell's au- 
thority) for Mr. Welch. The mistake no doubt arose 
from the circumstance that they frequently worked in 
concert. Previous to his appointment as a magistrate, 
John Fielding, in addition to assisting his brother, seems 
to have been largely concerned in the promotion of that 
curious enterprise, the "Universal-Register-Office," so often 
advertised in the Covent-Garden Journal. It appears to 
have been an estate office, lost property office, servants' 
registry, curiosity shop, and multifarious general agency. 



POSTSCRIPT. 188 

As a magistrate, in spite of his blindness, John Fielding 
was remarkably energetic, and is reported to have known 
more than 3000 thieves by their voices alone, and could 
recognise them when brought into Court. He wrote a 
description of London and Westminster, as well as some 
professional and other works. He was knighted in 1761, 
and died at Brompton Place in 1780. Lyttelton, who had 
become Sir George in 1751, was raised to the peerage as 
Baron Lyttelton of Frankley three years after Fielding's 
death. He diedi n 1773. In 1760-65 he published his 
Dialogues of the Dead, profanely characterised by Mr. 
Walpole as "Dead Dialogues." No. 28 of these is a col- 
loquy between "Plutarch, Charon, and a Modern Book- 
seller," and it contains the following reference to Fielding : 
" We have [says Mr. Bookseller] another writer of these 
imaginary histories, one who has not long since descended 
to these regions. His name is Fielding ; and his works, as 
I have heard the best judges say, have a true spirit of com- 
edy, and an exact representation of nature, with fine moral 
touches. He has not indeed given lessons of pure and 
consummate virtue, but he has exposed vice and meanness 
with all the powers of ridicule." It is perhaps excusable 
that Lawrence, like Roscoe and others, should have attrib- 
uted this to Lyttelton ; but the preface nevertheless assigns 
it, with two other dialogues, to a " different hand." They 
were, in fact, the first essays in authorship of that illustri- 
ous blue-stocking, Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu. 

Fielding's only posthumous works are the Journal of a 
Voyage to Lisbon and the comedy of The Fathers; or. 
The Good-Natur^d Man. The Journal was published in 
February, 1755, together with a fragment of a Comment 
on Bolingbroke's Essays, which Mallet had issued in 
March of the previous year. This fragment must there- 



184 FIELDING. 

fore have been begun in the last months of Fielding's life ; 
and, according to Murphy, he made very careful prepara- 
tion for the work, as attested by long extracts from the 
Fathers and the leading controversialists; which, after his 
death, were preserved by his brother. Beyond a passage 
or two in Richardson's Correspondence, and a sneering ref- 
erence by Walpole to Fielding's " account how his dropsy 
was treated and teased by an innkeeper's wife in the Isle 
of Wight," there is nothing to show how the Journal was 
received, still less that it brought any substantial pecuniary 
relief to "those innocents," to whom reference had been 
made in the "Dedication." The play was not placed 
upon the stage until 1778. Its story, which is related in 
the Advertisement, is curious. After it had been set aside 
in 1742, 1 it seems to have been submitted to Sir Charles 
Hanbury Williams. Sir Charles was just starting for 
Russia, as Envoy Extraordinary. Whether the MS. went 
with him or not is unknown; but it was lost until 1775 
or 1776, when it was recovered in a tattered and forlorn 
condition by Mr. Johnes, M.P. for Cardigan, from a person 
who entertained a very poor and even contemptuous opin- 
ion of its merits. Mr. Johnes thought otherwise. He sent 
it to Garrick, who at once recognised it as " Harry Field- 
ing's Comedy." Revised and retouched by the actor and 
Sheridan, it was produced at Drury Lane, as The Fathers, 
with a prologue and epilogue by Garrick. For a few 
nights it was received with interest, and even some flick- 
ering enthusiasm. It was then withdrawn, and there is 
no likelihood that it will ever be revived. 

1 Vide Chapter. IV., p. 89. 



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